


(I've lived so much life) I think that God is gonna have to kill me twice

by somebody_im_not



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Game: Resident Evil 2 Remake (2019), Gen, Post-Resident Evil: Vendetta, That's it that's the plot, Time Travel, Vendetta!Leon ends up in Claire A, all this is is protective dad leon and also claire and leon are best friends, also background chreon Exists, for real there is no new plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:00:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 41,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23997166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somebody_im_not/pseuds/somebody_im_not
Summary: The man promptly got up and put a few more rounds in the zombie’s head, exploding its head. Ok , this guy was trained for this. But…how? Who was he? His whole 'get-up' didn't seem very military so how had he gotten this training? She had some questions for this man.His face was a mask. Finally, he broke the tension by asking, “Claire?”Claire immediately rounded her gun on his head. His hands went back in the air, a smart choice . “How do you know my name?” she ordered.——or the one in which Leon ends up in Raccoon City again and the nightmare repeats itself.
Relationships: Leon S. Kennedy & Claire Redfield, Leon S. Kennedy/Chris Redfield, Sherry Birkin & Claire Redfield, Sherry Birkin & Leon S. Kennedy
Comments: 54
Kudos: 245





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a 1 month in the making and I'm really excited to put it out here finally! I've only recently joined the RE fandom so I hope people will like it. Also yes, do be warned: there is no plot. This is just RE2make but also one (1) Vendetta!Leon thrown in the mix. I wrote this fic because I wanted to. But yeah, avoid if you don't like rehashes. Which this is 30k of.  
> Title is from Fall Out Boy, rated M cuz of the normal amount of violence and gore in RE games + swearing. Hope y'all enjoy!

Clean-up after Arias was a mess.

He wasn’t going to lie; this hadn’t been a great mission. Getting to do it with Chris might’ve been nice, but Leon _knew_ he would be in for it for disappearing from their house to go drink in a random mountain town. He knew Chris didn’t take it well then and he still wasn’t taking it well. Leon could tell it reminded him too much of his extended stay in Edonia, after all the shit Ada pulled. He still didn’t know what the hell was going on with the mercenary and he just didn’t want a part of it at this point.

He hated himself for doing it, too. He just…he needed a break.

And he was _real_ tempted to just forgo the clean-up op. He knew Hannigan would cover for him anyway. But he was going to be here for Chris, especially since one of his squad had died. Leon wasn’t too familiar with the Silver Dagger team but he knew Chris was feeling the brunt of Damien’s death and dammit, he wasn’t going to leave him alone after something like that. Not after Piers.

So, he appeared at the clean-up site against his better judgement. He asked Chris, mostly for the benefit of the other Silver Daggers, “So what are we doing here?”

Chris answered his question. “Well, Arias was experimenting with all sorts of shit down here. The A-Virus, Tyrants et cetera.” Leon’s shoulders winced in response. He had been yeeted a lot in the past week. Chris continued on, “Who knows what else he’s got cooking up in here. HQ wants us to have a look around and see if anything could really cause another biowar.”

Leon snorted at the last statement as he put in his comm – he left his in the car since he wasn’t on D.S.O. duty right now. Arias had already sent New York spiralling, he probably had other stuff that could destroy the world.

Leon wasn’t used to actually taking part in a clean-up. Almost 100% of the time, the place always got nuked or self-destructed. All these organisations seemed to _really_ like their self-destruct sequences. Everywhere else got nuked by the government. There wasn’t usually anything to actually clean up afterwards.

~

While Chris, Leon and the rest of Chris’ team searched Arias’ New York hideout. The B.S.A.A. had sent agents to his other hideouts. Given that the four of them were already in the city, the B.S.A.A. had let them go on themselves and would send backup later. At the very least, they could shut down his operations quickly and efficiently even if they couldn’t find any other research.

Leon might not have known D.C. and Nadia personally, but they were close with Chris and they were really helpful in their fight on the rooftop. Of course, they always talked about Breaking Bad, but Leon wasn’t really going to complain about that. It _was_ a good show. It helped disassociate his mind from the events of the past week. Besides, they also went through a major loss. He wasn’t going to deny them of their coping mechanism.

Chris kept trying to talk to him but Leon kept shutting him down. This wasn’t the time and place for Chris to yell at him. Why was he even pursuing it now? They had been together for a whole week before this and not once did he actually say anything about it. Why now?

_You know what? I’ll just get it over and done with._

He herded Chris to a separate room where the rest of the Silver Dagger team couldn’t hear them. “Chris, what?” He spat out the words.

Chris’ eyes immediately softened. “I just wanted to check if you were okay. I know we haven’t…talked about any of this and I know you’ve gone through a lot but it’s okay.”

Leon let out a soft chuckle at that. “You big sap. Yeah, yeah, it’s just a lot to take in after everything with Rebecca and…”

His voice trailed off and Chris knew exactly where he was going with this. “Hazard of the job, isn’t it?” He tried to put on a brave smile and Leon mentally commended him for it. “We can talk about it later, if you want. Let’s just go and mess with Arias’ shit for now.”

Chris put his arm over Leon’s shoulder and the latter actually laughed at that.

Leon marvelled at how his and Chris’ relationship had changed over the years. They first met through Claire. More specifically when she was trapped on Rockfort Island and Leon had to track down Chris. From then on, Claire had forced them together at every gathering she ever planned. She was way too social. It only increased when she found out about Leon’s small crush. She had basically forced her brother to ask him out.

Not that Leon was complaining. He wasn’t going to let go of Chris now.

~

Okay, in hindsight, he _really_ should not have touched something in a dangerous, viral lab without doing checking first.

But honestly, he was getting tired of this. They hadn’t found anything for a good while and if they did, it was just remains of A-Virus research. Not gonna lie, after a whole city like New York getting infected, Leon was already getting sick and tired of Arias.

The Silver Dagger team wasn’t finding anything either and Leon could tell his boyfriend was getting just a bit antsy. A team of 4 people weren’t going to be able to clean out a whole building hideout. Where was that backup?

Finally, they found…something. A weird machine. It looked nothing like any kind of virus distributor or synthesizer. It didn’t even look like it was used for bioweaponry. That was a first in many departments and it really should have set off more red flags in his head. At least Arias wasn’t going stale with his research unlike the other dumb corporations. He had something else to wreak havoc.

He was dead now though. So, he couldn’t do shit.

At least, not if Leon had gone and touched the thing. Like an idiot. It wasn’t like he thought it was important. It was big and clunky and certainly didn’t look like it worked. It also instantly reminded him of the NEST, with its cold, clinical look. Leon shook his head. He hadn’t thought of Raccoon City in ages, it wouldn’t do to get stuck there again. There was a panel in front of it for operating it but it had already gathered dust. _Seems Arias stopped caring about this once the A-Virus got developed,_ Leon mused.

He touched it. And it lit up. Super cliché. It pulled him inside and the machine seemed to react to his presence. He instinctively put out his hand towards Chris to try and pull himself out as Chris ran towards him. D.C. and Nadia ran to the control panel and tried to figure out what was going on. Leon reminded himself to buy them a fruit basket when this was over.

But as soon as Chris reached him, Leon vanished out of sight and the machine depowered, having done its job. In the dark, the Silver Daggers found themselves lost and confused.

***

Claire was _not_ having a good day.

She had come to Raccoon City to search for Chris, because he had left without telling her where. She did not expect for the city to be overrun by literal zombies.

The one good thing to come from this was that she knew that Chris was in Europe, doing God knows what. Now, she could hunt his ass down when she got out of here.

Despite all the horrible monstrosities she had encountered, she had found some survivors. Okay, she found two survivors. Okay, one of those survivors was dying of a zombie bite. _But_ , if he could survive until now, so could she. Besides, Leon was still alive out there. She couldn’t lose hope for him either. She would find a way out of this town. She would find a way to survive and find her brother again.

The grenade launcher she found would make sure of that.

Now, she just had to get the maiden medallion. After her talk with Leon on the outside, she’d gotten some bolt cutters which she’d used on that door in the operations room, which gave her the detonator. She already had the battery from the S.T.A.R.S. office and now she could get the final medallion and finally get out of here.

Speaking of Leon, she couldn’t help but think of him. How would he be dealing with this? Hopefully he had found a way out of the horde. She wouldn’t forgive herself if he had died. After he saved her life, it would not do for him to just die.

She also wasn’t going to think about any of the weird sexual tension between them. A zombie apocalypse wasn’t the time and place for that.

She did not expect to start hearing other gunshots ring out through the police station. It shocked her out of her stupor. She smacked herself and thanked her lucky stars that there weren’t any zombies around. 

Anyway, she was certain that at this point, she would have seen someone else already if they were here. All the exits were closed as well. Who the fuck was this mystery man?

She made her way towards the noise, wincing at how loud it was. She was 90% sure the person was in the library considering that the gunshots sounded like they came from upstairs. She figured, why not kill two birds with one stone and put the valve handle into the shower room at the same time?

She took the stairs up and went through the shower room and...what the _fuck_ was that? She could vaguely see its outline on the wall and it was roughly humanoid but even in the low lighting, she could tell it had no skin. She could swear that she could see its brain out in the open. Her brain had a faint memory of a note she had seen on the third floor calling them Lickers. What kind of name was that?

She did remember though, that they were blind - and yes, she was going to call them blind fucks from now on - and if she stealth-ed then she would be okay. She wasn't going to test that theory and moved at a snail's pace. The fucker dropped a human body it was holding...what...and dropped down. On instinct, she stopped breathing but still kept going. She knew there was another room somewhere on this corridor and if she could get to that, she could breathe again.

The Licker's tongue sniffed the air and her hand went out to feel the wall beside her as she kept her eyes glued to the fucker. She didn't miss their huge claws that could probably rip her to shreds if she wasn't careful. Finally, her hand hit something wood and she turned, reaching out for a doorknob. She opened it before the Licker could see something amiss and hurried inside breathing a sigh of relief. Subconsciously, she knew they couldn't open doors.

She looked around and realised she was in the S.T.A.R.S. office. This was where her brother worked. She looked around but nothing of interest caught her eye. Why couldn't her brother have some damn trinkets around? She grumbled and turned to the armoury and holy shit, an SMG. She hurried to the door but it was locked, leaving a sour taste in her mouth. It was right there, tantalising her. 

She noticed the computer next to it and tried to fiddle with it...she needed authentication? God dammit, why was this so hard?

With nothing else to do in the S.T.A.R.S. office, she readied her nerves to leave again. No doubt the blind fuck would be right out the door waiting for her. She wasn't going to try with just her revolver. Despite how trusty it was in dealing with simple zombies, she had a feeling these things would be much more agile. This wasn't going to cut it. 

She unholstered her grenade launcher and looked down at the rounds she had so far. She had made some acid rounds and she had also found some flame rounds. Which would work better? _Hmmmm..._

Eventually she decided on flame but as a last resort. She still had a way to just sneak past them and she was going to take it. Save ammo, you know?

She opened the door and spotted the Licker on the other side of the hallway towards the showers. She mentally whooped. Now, she just had to sneak past, unlock the door on the end, and find the person. Oh god, she had forgotten about the person. If she had gotten distracted by this thing, she was going to-

She got to the end without incident, if you don't call extreme anxiety an incident, and unlocked the door at the end. She looked at the unicorn statue's empty space and walked past it into the library. Hopefully the guy hadn't left by then.

~

When she found them, she found it was a man. He was wearing a leather jacket and jeans, similar to her apparel. There was a handgun holster on his leg. The handgun in question was in his arm. He looked up in surprise as she opened the door and she approached him.

For a moment, he and Claire just stared at one another. His hair was cut in a similar style to Leon's, albeit a little longer, and it gave her a strange sense of déjà vu. He seemed to be staring through her soul, with a penetrating gaze. Finally, Claire noticed a corpse shambling up to the man.

Claire raised her SLS60, which must've confused the man. He let out a “Don’t shoot!” and raised his arms. And it was probably more than instinct that she had chosen to yell, “Get down!” The man complied and she was certain she could see a tiny smirk form on his face from the words. Claire shot the zombie, making it fall over.

The man promptly got up and put a few more rounds in the zombie’s head, exploding its head. _Ok_ , this guy was trained for this. But…how? Who was he? His whole 'get-up' didn't seem very military so how had he gotten this training? She had some questions for this man.

His face was a mask. Finally, he broke the tension by asking, “Claire?”

Claire immediately rounded her gun on his head. His hands went back in the air, _a smart choice_. “How the fuck do you know my name?” she ordered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look, Claire calls lickers blind fucks and i will die on this rock.  
> anyway, updates will hopefully be twice a week. A lot of this is written already so they will be semi-frequent. If anyone has any questions about the characters and stuff, you can always ask. comments give me life :D  
> also hit up [my tumblr](https://solangelo-ftw.tumblr.com/), come drown in leon kennedy feels with me


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go, chapter 2?   
> This chapter could be easily split in two because when I wrote this first, I didn't have any access to an actual playthrough of the game so I had to edit in a lot afterwards. I didn't even have the Marvin and Claire dialogue lmao. Hope y'all enjoy!

Leon woke up on the ground. As he regained consciousness, his surroundings looked familiar to him.

All he could remember was that machine, blinding light, and finally, darkness. His heart constricted at the thought of Chris being left alone in that damn lab.

He couldn’t keep thinking about that though. He had to scout out the area, find out where he was. It looked so familiar; it was like the memory was pulling at the back of his head but he just couldn’t remember.

He couldn’t stay in the same place either. If Leon was trapped by something that Arias had funded, it definitely wasn’t good for his health. At least his ribs had already healed over from the roof.

He got up and pulled out his Sentinel Nine. He hadn’t bothered to change what guns he’d had on him from the Arias fight. “Damn it,” he muttered to himself. He rounded a corner and, lo and behold, it was a zombie. At least that was something Leon was closely acquainted with.

Leon made his way through the narrow corridors. Slowly, he felt he could remember the layout of the area, but he still couldn’t remember what it was. The zombies themselves felt  weird too. They didn’t feel semi-intelligent, like all the other strains had throughout the years. They weren’t like Arias’ either. In fact, they reminded him of the original strain.

But that was  _ impossible _ , right? Every other corporation had moved on from the simplistic beginnings, looking for other mutations and strains. This couldn’t be…it couldn’t be Raccoon City again.

He emerged from the small corridors and rooms into a vast, well-lit main hall. He could see the goddess statue and the holders for the medallions. There were already two in there. He could see the main desk and –  _ Lt. Branagh _ ?

When Leon had entered the precinct back then, there had already been a zombie dressed as a police officer in there. From the many notes and papers strewn about the place, Leon figured the man was Lt. Marvin Branagh. He had never actually seen the man while he was still alive, but here he was.

Lt. Branagh saw him out of the corner of his eye and his eyes went wide. He obviously wasn’t expecting another survivor to appear out of nowhere. Especially since the doors had been barricaded.

He approached Branagh and asked, “You doing okay?”

That hadn’t been what Branagh was expecting. Nevertheless, he grunted out, “I’ve been better. Who are you?”

Leon rolled his eyes. How was he going to respond to this? This guy was supposed to be his Lieutenant, he would remember the name Leon S. Kennedy. Their office was still covered with ‘Welcome’ banners for God’s sake.

He decided to take the high road. “You don’t have the clearance to know that.” Just saying that elicited a smirk on Leon’s face. Was he just going to screw with all of them here? Yes, yes, he was.

Branagh’s face scrunched up at that. “What, you FBI?”

Leon humoured him for a second. “Higher up the chain than that,” his smirk growing wider by the second. He let it last on his face for a second before getting serious again. “So, are there any other survivors?”

Branagh seemed to war with himself for a second before speaking. “There’s a woman here, Claire Redfield. She’s finding a way out. There’s also a man outside, Leon Kennedy, but I don’t know where he is by now.”

Leon's eyes took a shine when he heard Claire’s name. So, she was here. “Where did she go then?”

Branagh replied, “She went to meet up with Kennedy at the courtyard outside but I don’t know where she would’ve gone by now. If you’re going after her, be careful. You are  _ really _ not dressed for this.”

Leon kept his features schooled. He really could have choked on the spot right there. “You worry too much, Lieutenant.”

~

He would’ve gotten there faster if it wasn’t for all the damn zombies. Why did everything hate him? Why did that “time machine” take him back to Raccoon City of all places?

He also wished he had just sucked up his pride and checked the CCTV footage to try to figure out where Claire went. It had been 20 years; just because he saw the R.P.D. in his nightmares did not mean that he remembered its layout whatsoever.

He spent a good 10 minutes running around without seeing anything before he just stopped. Maybe he could just wait for some gunshots. Hell, he could just make some. If there was anything that could attract Claire Redfield, it would be gunshots.

He entered the library and decided to make some noise there. There were a good number of zombies bunched up in there and besides it would be much smarter to kill them all right now before the whole thing with the clocktower.

He started picking them off one by one. The sound reverberated through the room and he knew people would be able to hear it immediately.

When he had killed them all, he stood in silence and let his gun hang out of his outstretched hand. Why?  _ Why? _ Why was he back in this hellhole? His whole life had been orchestrated by Raccoon City and why the hell was he back here again? As he wallowed, he heard a door creak behind him and a person walk up to him.

He turned and immediately saw  _ Claire _ . It was both her...and not her. He remembered this Claire, still 19 and looking for Chris. It wasn’t who she was now though – Raccoon City had changed both of them. It was so weird to look at her like this, still young. She was still so young and she didn’t deserve to be thrown into this. His heart wrenched and he promised himself that he would help her out of this.

Suddenly, she brought her gun to his head.  _ Okay, maybe she isn’t so different.  _ He instinctively put his hands up and yelled the first thing that came to mind. “Don’t shoot!” It gave him déjà  vu for their first encounter in the gas station, which he realised had only been a few hours ago for Claire.

Claire seemed to be having the same thought, saying “Get down!” and Leon couldn’t help the tiny smirk on his face. She shot a zombie behind him and it went down. Leon got up and put a few more rounds in its head – it wasn’t going to stay down with one shot. If it wasn’t for Claire, he probably would’ve gotten chowed on. He had spaced out for longer than he had liked.

He looked back at Claire and he could tell she was getting a bit antsy. She had the exact same social cues as Chris, something he never ceased to tease her on. He had been banned from Redfield Game Night and yes, he was still salty about that.

He finally spoke up to break the tension. “Claire?”  _ That should be fine, right? I can introd – shit no, her gun’s back up, fuck _ .

He raised his arms again – never anger a Redfield – and he could see the tiny smirk on her face. She ordered him, “How do you know my name?”

Shit, he hadn’t thought of that yet. How was he going to put it?  _ ‘Sup Claire? I’m a future version of the Leon you rode into town with. The one who’s now a secret government operative and is dating your brother _ .

Yeah, no, he wasn’t doing that. Claire could see him thinking about what to say and he could see her finger itching towards the trigger. She was expecting an answer and what could he say without messing everything up?

“I…I know your brother! I know Chris. Is that good enough for you?” he hoped it would work.

Claire had lowered her revolver and was now staring at him. “You…you know Chris? How can I believe you?”

Leon sighed. Good on Claire for asking so many questions but he really didn’t want to do this right now. He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe you could believe me because we’re both trapped in a zombie apocalypse and we can’t be enemies if we want to survive?”

Claire scoffed. “Touché. I’ll take your word for that then. What’s your name, since you already know mine?”

Leon was ready to pull the same thing with Marvin again. He couldn’t tell Claire who he was,  _ right _ ? He eventually settled for a “Let’s just say I can’t tell you.”

Claire rolled her eyes. “Whatever, it’s your funeral. I’ll just call you Mr. Agent from now on. How long will it be before you snap from that?” Leon winced. Just getting ready to repeatedly hear that was already giving him a headache.

“Ok,  _ Mr. Agent _ , let’s get going. I just need to arm this explosive and then we can get on our way.” Jeez, just the way she had worded that already sent shivers down his spine. Why did Chris have to teach her how to be completely terrifying? Of course, he had done the same thing with Sherry but –

Sherry! He was actually going to get to meet her from the start! He physically stopped in his tracks just from the thought. It was only until Claire’s “Are we going Mr. Agent?” that he broke out of it.

~

Leon forced her to take stock of her weaponry before they continued. He still had his two guns, his Sentinel Nine concealed in his leg holster and a Desert Eagle under his jacket. He had stocked up on bullets after the clusterfuck of a fight with Arias and he had run out of bullets on his person.

She had an SLS60 and a  _ grenade launcher _ . He was still salty on how Claire got her hand on a fucking grenade launcher when he only got his when he fought the Tyrant.

Granted, his was an anti-tank missile launcher and it  _ was _ a gift from Ada. Oh my god, this was where he would meet Ada. Maybe he could find her for a second and flip her a double bird for absolutely trashing his life from the moment she appeared.

So, they went to set the C4 detonator. Leon shot the hanging zombie just in case he would ruin their chances of getting out of here while Claire set it and why did she know how to arm an explosive?

He followed her into the room and stood guard while she checked Edward’s journal for the code. After putting it in, she got the maiden medallion and shoved it in his face as if he wouldn’t know what it was.

Just as they were leaving, a Licker dropped down from the ceiling. Before he could do anything – not that he could anyway, he did not have the firepower on him to kill a Licker unless he was going to waste a full clip on it – Claire pushed past him with the grenade launcher.

She said, “Stand back!” as she shot it with a flame round. They ran right after that, not bothering to check if it had died or not. Damn Lickers.

It was just a simple job of putting it into the statue and the secret passageway opened up. Claire shone her flashlight down into it and muttered to herself, “Looks like it leads underground. Good. We can get out of this hellhole.”

He didn’t offer any comment on that and he opted to instead stare down into the room and wonder who it belonged to for the second time in his life.

***

While  _ Mr. Agent _ was staring down the pit, Claire called out to Marvin, “Hey, Marvin! Guess what! I think I found a way out.”

When he didn’t stir, she walked up to him and continued, “Marvin, come on. Let’s get you out of here, let’s go.”

She tried to touch him to get him to stir but instead he sprang up and looked around in fear. He panted and Claire tried to ask, “Are you okay?” Even as she said it, she knew how ridiculous it sounded. He was dying of a zombie bite for fuck’s sake!

She was determined to keep him alive though.

She kneeled down in front of him as he groaned in pain and felt his bloodied wound. He struggled out, “No, I – Just go. Save yourself.”

She refused to accept it and instead tried to reach for his wound. “C’mon, it’s bad. We’ve got to get you to a hospital now-” but she was cut off by Marvin

“ _ Please _ , Claire. We both know how this is going to end. Get out of the city.” His eyes looked down at his wound and back at her too many times and no! She wasn’t going to leave him here!

“I can’t just  _ leave _ you here!” but once again, she was cut off by Marvin.

“Claire…please go…do this for me.” His tone turned pleading as he kept up eye contact until that last moment. At some point, Mr. Agent had joined their little party but kept behind Claire, perhaps to give them some privacy.

She finally relented and stood up. She wasn’t going to acknowledge how her voice had trembled when she said, “Okay.”

She started walking away but at Marvin’s pants, she stopped and turned back to him. She called for his attention, “Hey, Marvin?”

When he looked up at her, she just said simply, “Thank you.”

The agent had nothing to say.

~

As they entered the underground tunnel, she spared one last look at Marvin before the passageway sealed itself behind her and the man. She had to look ahead, find a way out of the city and find Chris again.

She vaguely registered herself picking up some flame rounds on the table and joining the agent in a lift. Hopefully they were out of trouble for now. She looked at the agent and started thinking. How did he know Chris? She had so many questions for her idiot brother. What the fuck was he even doing in Europe?

Suddenly the agent in front of her stopped and she almost ran into his back. She looked up and saw that their surroundings had changed from the semi-warm, inviting feel of the police station’s main hall to a much darker, drearier machinery room. She looked back at the man in confusion – why had he stopped?

His hand had gone up to his ear and when she strained her ears, she could hear someone talking. The man had gone stock-still and uttered something that froze her to the spot as well.

“Chris?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hehe, this is a shitty cliffhanger lmao. anyway the weird science of Chris getting to talk with Leon will be answered next chapter :D   
> [My tumblr](https://solangelo-ftw.tumblr.com/) again because I like self-promos.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh i'm pretty happy with the dialogue in this chapter but i don't know how radio call signs work and also the G1 fight is already pretty pathetic dont @ me on it ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Chris had hurried to the console as soon as Leon had disappeared. He had to find out what happened.

“D.C., Nadia, you guys got anything?” He had to stay calm for them.

“I’m trying to find out what the machine is programmed to do. It seems pretty fried; it must have taken way too much energy to do whatever it did. At least the previous researchers haven’t put any security on this,” D.C. answered.

Nadia was off to the side and was talking through her comm. Chris nodded his head towards her. He could tell she was calling to get clearance for the B.S.A.A.’s intelligence experts. They would be a better candidate for figuring out the mechanisms of the machine.

Chris knew he wouldn’t be much help around his team. If he was here, he would just be annoying D.C. and Nadia as they worked. They were a lot more qualified to work on it than him. He was way too protective for his own good. If they found anything, they would always call him. Besides, stumbling around a facility and finding secret notes that revealed everything were much more his forte.

He told D.C. and left. Pretty soon, Nadia joined him. Unlike D.C., Nadia was from the L.A.P.D. before she joined the BSAA and she specialised in marksmanship. Computers, not so much. She had done her part and Chris was already beyond grateful for it.

Nadia spoke up. “Chris, I get it, ok? If something happened to Cassandra, I would be a mess right now. We’ll find him. Don’t give up hope.”

Chris just nodded and gave her a slight smile. He didn’t trust himself to speak whatsoever.

He and Nadia continued their original purge of the building, just now with the added motivation of getting Leon back. They couldn’t find anything apart from the A-Virus research (couldn’t they have found this earlier?) and found nothing on the weird machine. It was almost as if all the research had been scrapped which worried Chris. What the hell had happened to Leon?

After about an hour, D.C. called back in. He seemed enthusiastic. Chris and Nadia made their way back, slightly disappointed as they found nothing.

D.C. was pretty pumped and Chris saw why immediately. “I was digging through the files and I found something. When this thing took Agent Kennedy, it made an imprint on his comm device. Somehow, if we use a similar device to the same channel, we could theoretically talk to him, wherever he is.”

Chris’ face brightened immediately. “Good. How do we get it to work?”

D.C. pointed to a small opening on the console that Chris realised wasn’t there before. “You just gotta insert it in that section and it’ll scan it. If it’s usable, you could use it to talk.”

Nadia looked at Chris and said, “We’ll give you some privacy, Chris. D.C.?”

The latter took the hint and patted Chris on the shoulder before leaving with her. Chris walked over to the scanner and installed his comm. He hoped it would work. Leon usually used a radio transmitter to talk with his handler but he agreed to have a B.S.A.A. comm in during this mission.

The machine display glowed bright green and Chris could only hope it would work. He put the comm back in and immediately said, “Leon? Are you there? Leon, come in!”

It almost stopped his heart to hear Leon yell back, “Chris?”

***

Leon’s hand went up to check the comm again. It couldn’t be…but it was? “Chris?”

He could see Claire in his peripheral vision visibly perking up and moving closer. It probably wasn’t a good idea to let her know that her brother, who she’d been searching for, could be  reached through his radio. Even if it wasn’t her Chris. She could shove it – this was important.

“Leon, oh my god, it’s you! I was so worried.” Chris’ concerned voice came through.

“It’s okay, Chris, I’m fine.” Hearing Chris’ name again must’ve sparked something inside Claire, because she broke out of her stupor and started smacking at Leon’s arm. He looked at her hand and smacked it off again. He irritably said, “Hands off the comm, willya? I’m having a conversation.”

Chris’ voice came through again. “Leon? Who’re you with?”

Leon side-stepped Claire and dropped his voice. “Claire.”

“Claire? What is she doing there?” The overbearing concern was back.

“Also, I’m in Raccoon City.” His voice dropped to a low whisper, “In 1998.”

“What the hell? How are you back there? This thing can’t be a…a time machine?” Leon could tell Chris was grappling with that notion. He himself couldn’t believe it until he saw Claire with his own eyes.

“I know. I don’t know how…but I’m here now.” He shrugged and backed off some more from Claire’s arms. To her, he hissed, “Can you  _ not _ ?”

Leon could hear Chris thinking on the other end. After a short pause, a crackle on the other end replied, “Give her the comm.”

“Chris, are you sure?” Despite his misgivings about that probably horrible plan, he could see why he wanted to do that. He saw that Chris realised Claire’s position – she had been searching for him and now she meets a man who had a direct connection to him? As an afterthought, he added, “Don’t wreck the timeline.”

He helped Claire put the comm in her ear and tried to tune out their sibling talk but even without listening in, Leon could tell something was weird. He couldn’t hear Claire say anything scathing whatsoever and he decided to listen in. Claire looked like she had shut down and was replying mechanically to whatever Chris was feeding her.

Pretty soon, she gave Leon back his comm and he placed it back in his ear. He gave Claire another once-over before diverting his attention back to the other Redfield in his ear.

Chris beat him to the chase. “Something happened to her.”

Leon moved further away from Claire for some privacy and then replied, “Weird, right? She heard you and just shut down. What did you say to her?”

“I just told her to calm down and that I would find her when I was done with work. That’s actually what happened, wasn’t I?”

Leon scoffed. “Not until I came and found you. It might be because you told her not to come. You know she won’t follow that order, Captain.”

“You got me – it was just a ploy to get her to actually come for me. You and me wouldn’t even have met if it wasn’t for Rockfort Island.” Leon could hear the smirk in Chris’ voice.

“Hah, great joke. Not like she would get us to meet at her barbeques anyway.” He cleared his throat. “Have you found a way to get me back yet?”

Chris audibly winced through the comm. “We didn’t even know this was a time machine until you told me right now. D.C. only managed to dig through the files to find a way to talk to you. Good news is if this thing can track your comm piece, it can definitely track you. B.S.A.A. analysts are hopefully headed up here as well to help decipher this thing. Bad news is, the machine really took a hit from carting you back…to RC. We don’t know when we can get you back here.”

Leon sighed. “Alright then. This is a nightmare. For my sanity, can you pitch through to Hannigan? I left my radio in my car, I had the D.S.O. transport it to New York after Arias. I told you how to get through to her, right?”

Chris’ tone brightened. “You have. I’ll get it right after this. I’ll need to remember it’s in your car, the one vehicle you haven’t completely wrecked yet.”

Leon rolled his eyes. “Whatever.” You lowered his voice. “I’ll be waiting. Call me back when you’ve gotten anything. I love you.”

Chris replied fondly. “I will. Love you too.” He hung up right after.

Leon felt an emptiness inside him as he lowered his hand from his comm. He turned back to Claire who was staring at him in shock. He didn’t know how much she had heard. She just shook her head and said, “That wasn’t Chris.”

That threw Leon for a second. Claire continued, “I know what Chris sounds like. That wasn’t him. You called him a captain but Chris wasn’t ever one. You kept throwing around agency names that don’t exist. I don’t know if you actually know Chris,  _ Mr. Agent _ , but that wasn’t him.”

Leon was slightly terrified she had heard him say “I love you” to Chris. She didn’t bring it up, though, so he felt he was in the clear.

He raised his eyebrow. “We’ll just agree to disagree, huh. Haven’t you ever heard of being polite and not eavesdropping?”

She snorted and turned around and continued down the maintenance tunnel. He remembered this area, where he had fought Birkin’s first mutation. He knew it fell into the darkness, only for him to fight it again in the sewers and the NEST. He knew Claire got here faster than him, but that couldn’t mean she fought it for it to claw itself back, right?  _ Right _ ?

Claire tried to pry off the locker to enter the control room but she couldn’t. Leon said, “You need some help?”

She just replied, “Shut up,” and crouched to look in. As Claire pointed her flashlight, he cocked his Sentinel Nine. Whether or not the G would appear, something was going to happen here.

When he crouched to check what Claire was looking at, he was floored immediately. It was Sherry! This was where Claire had found her? What the hell?

Sherry pointed to a point behind them and whispered, “He’s right behind you,” and Leon kicked himself for not paying attention to their conversation. He felt something drop onto the platform behind them and when he looked, there it was. Birkin’s first stage.

He immediately brought up his gun but before he could fire off a shot, it pounded the metal grate they were standing on. It dropped him to the ground and even Claire fell over. It continued pounding the walkway until the grate gave way and dropped them all onto the floor below.

Leon got up quick and helped up Claire. She spat out, “Words ain’t gonna cut it with this freak.” The words reminded him uncomfortably of what he himself had said at it when he encountered it.

He gestured behind him to run back and gain some ground, Claire responding. He put 3 bullets into its eye as he gave her a battle plan, “I’ll circle around it and hit it from there. Keep your distance from it – don’t let the pipe hit you. Gather all the ammo you find scattered around. We’ll figure it out later.”

Claire nodded and Leon ran.

He kept behind the creature, unloading rounds whenever he had a straight shot. He knew exactly how to kill Gs – hit the big red weak spot.

Leon knew that Claire had a lot of grenade launcher rounds left since she hadn’t used it much in the police station. He was kinda sad to see her use so much of its ammo right now but Birkin kind of deserved it.

Anytime, the G turned back to try to get to him, Claire always put a fire round right into his ugly eye, diverting its attention back to her. She was great at distractions, good to note.

Finally, Claire placed the final blow and it tumbled off into the darkness, screaming as it fell. He let her believe it had died. He wanted to believe it too. She was visibly trembling and he didn’t want to scare her even more.

Leon ran around to meet up with Claire. They ran back towards the centre of the makeshift arena where a ladder could be visibly seen and Claire talked up to Sherry. “Little girl? It’s safe now. It’s over.”

Sherry appeared over the edge of the ledge and looked down. “Are you sure?”

Claire nodded. “Yeah. I promise. Everything’s fine.”

Leon decided to enter the conversation. “We just need you to lower the ladder for us. Can you do that?”

Sherry asked back, “Will you help me find my mom?”

Leon remembered Annette Birkin clearly. She had been the one to tell him Ada was a spy the whole time. He also remembered she had succumbed to her wounds right after shooting her into the pit.

Claire asked, “Your mom’s down here?”

Sherry replied cheerily, “I think so.” And then in a sadder tone, “I hope so.”

Claire looked up and nodded. “Yeah, of course. We’ll help you.” At least she was finally warming up to his presence.

Sherry smiled and pushed down the ladder. Claire and Leon looked at each other. Leon gestured for her to go first and she accepted. Leon followed after her.

They started making their way through the maintenance corridors. After Leon pulled down the switch to move the platform (Sherry saying, “You got it!”), Claire decided to make small talk to pass the time. “So…what’s your mom like?”

Sherry perked up. “She works at Umbrella. She’s making an important new medicine.”

Leon hid a smirk. The G-Virus was  _ definitely _ an important new medicine.

Claire asked, “Umbrella? That big pharmaceutical company?” clearly trying to figure out exactly what Sherry was talking about.

Sherry’s tone turned wistful. “She’s always at work. I don’t get to see her much.” The Birkins did love Sherry. But they were also extremely neglectful. Something Leon would try to rectify with Sherry’s future foster parents.

Claire smiled and said, “Well, hopefully you get to see her again soon.” Oh, did she ever know.

A silence rang out between them before Claire tried a different tack. “So…where’s your dad?”

Sherry murmured, “He, um…worked with my mom but he’s gone now.” Oh, Leon wished.

Claire seemed to think that meant William was dead. “Wow. Both of my parents are gone, it’s just me and my brother.”

Sherry’s tone became apologetic. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

Claire waved it away. “Don’t be. It means we’ve got something in common and…that’s a good thing, right?”

She looked to Leon and said “You got anything to add, Mr. Agent?”

Leon shook his head. “I don’t got any sob stories.” Which was so horribly  _ false _ . But they were both too mature for Sherry and too not-for-Claire-to-know. He was a good dad, okay?

Claire could tell he was lying about the sob story thing. He was a government agent and he knew he looked like a depressed alcoholic, which he had been for the past week or so. But she seemed to understand.

Sherry focused on the other thing. “Your name is Mr. Agent?”

Leon chuckled. “No, I have a name. But I can’t tell anyone because I’m a secret agent. That’s why Claire here calls me that. But…”, he kneeled down to whisper to her, “I’ll tell you my name. Later, though, we can’t tell Claire.”

Sherry nodded excitedly. He got up and ruffled her hair, smiling. She didn’t seem to mind. Claire, however, looked weirdly at him. He gave her a flat look and said, “I like kids, alright? Is that a crime?”

Leon gestured for the younger blonde, “Come on, Sherry. Let’s go.”

When the girls startled and stared at him, he realised what he did wrong. He wasn’t supposed to know her name. Claire seriously hadn’t asked what her name was? Damn, Sherry didn’t even know Claire’s name until he told her.

He just gave them both another flat look. “Secret agent, remember? I know things.”

Sherry seemed to accept the explanation but Claire still looked sceptical. Why would an agent, even one like him, know a  _ random _ girl’s name? The Birkins were far from random, though. She would learn that later.

They walked to another ladder, this time Leon taking point. He pried off the manhole and climbed out, helping Sherry and Claire up.

They were in the parking garage again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i promise the other Birkin fights are written much better. Also the woman Nadia mentions (Cassandra) is there because apparently Nadia was written as a lesbian for the movie and look we need some mlm/wlw solidarity lmao. Next chapter is the parking garage and...we all know what's in the parking garage for Claire, wish me luck.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alright chapter 4 chapter 4. i *clap* don't *clap* know *clap* what *clap* i'm *clap* doing. get ready for some bullshitting cuz that's all i'm good at.

Claire examined their surroundings. It was…just the parking garage? She had to walk through a maintenance tunnel and fight a mutant creature just for the parking garage? She was going to have a word with her brother on how he had worked here.

The agent brushed over it and went to the garage gate. The shutters were down but he was looking at the keycard slot. Claire walked towards the shutters as well, leading Sherry there as well.

The agent turned towards them and grumbled, “Dammit. We need a keycard.”

Claire wasn’t going to sit on her ass and wait for a keycard to drop out of the air. She gestured towards the shutters themselves, saying, “Here. Come help.”

Sherry joined her faithfully but the agent stayed back. They tried to lift it but it didn’t work. Claire stared intensely at the agent. He just shook his head. “It’s not going to work.”

Claire stuck out her tongue at him. How would he know that? She looked back at Sherry and asked her again. “Are you sure this is the way?”

Sherry nodded. “This is how my mom took me last time.”

Her mom had brought her to Umbrella’s facility through the R.P.D.’s parking garage? Uh huh,  _ sure _ . Claire wasn’t buying this.

Before she could ask further, a gruff, old voice spoke from the right. “Sherry?” Claire got up and shielded Sherry. The agent went up in front of both of them.

The man continued as if she and the agent didn’t exist and started approaching them. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you, Sherry. Brave little girl to leave your house in the middle of this mess.” 

He stopped in front of their little group. She could see the agent’s hands itch towards his gun. He pulled out his gun at the same moment as the old man pulled out his and said, “On the ground, hands behind your head.”

Claire whispered, “You can’t be serious.” The man shot the windshield of a police car behind her and reasserted himself. “On the ground. Now.”

The agent slowly raised his arms and kneeled down, putting his gun a few away from himself. When Claire looked at him incredulously, he just nodded towards the floor. She wasn’t happy with this but she would listen. The agent had only had good intuitions so far.

The man fished around in his pockets and came up with some zip ties. He tossed them towards Sherry. “Sherry, tie them up.”

Sherry asked, “Why’re you doing this?” 

The man spat out, “Shut up. Tie them.”

As Sherry just stared at him, the man brought his gun into Claire’s face. “Ok, then. Tie them up, or she dies.” The whole time, the agent’s face was a mask. Why wasn’t he doing anything? Bad intuitions,  _ bad intuitions _ !

Sherry was finally scared enough to start tying them up. After she had tied up Claire, she moved on to the agent trembling. The agent whispered something to her, and while it was too soft for Claire to hear, Sherry looked determined and nodded. 

Claire turned back to the man. She asked, “What’s this all about?”

The man inserted a keycard into the slot and said, “Child endangerment, for starters.”

He then turned back towards Sherry and gestured with his gun, “Sherry, come here.”

Claire shot back, “What are you gonna do to her?”

The man kept his gaze fixed on Sherry as he said “None of your fucking business.”

Claire yelled, “If you hurt her, I swear to god. My brother is S.T.A.R.S. and I will fucking-”

She was cut off as the man kicked her in the ribs. The agent held up the mask but Claire could see him tensing. The man gestured again for Sherry. “Sherry, get over here.”

Sherry stayed still. The man walked towards Claire again. He kneeled in front of her, “What’s your name?” When she didn’t respond, he lifted her by the neck and put his gun in her neck and asked again. “What’s your fucking name?”  _ Ew, ew, fucking gross don’t fucking touch me- _

In an instant, the man’s gun was flying from his hand and the agent was facing the lunatic. “Hey, asshole. Why don’t you try that trick on me?”

Only now could Claire see his eyes. There was an unbridled rage showing in his pupils that caused even Claire to shrink in fear. The lunatic was staring at him, dumbfounded. 

The lunatic went to fetch his gun and instead, brought it to the agent’s face. He stood far away this time, realising the danger of being close to the man. “Sherry, you come with me or this fucker gets it.” 

Sherry looked at the agent. He nodded imperceptibly and Sherry immediately jumped closer to the road entrance and said, “Ok! Ok, I’ll go! You better be taking me to my mom.”

The man raised his gun and faced Sherry again. “Absolutely.”

Claire got up again. She said to Sherry, “Don’t listen to him. He’s full of shit.” 

The man pistol-whipped her and she fell over again, the shock of the pain screaming in her face. She fell right in front of some of the glass from the broken windshield. An idea formed in her head.

Sherry screamed, “Stop hurting her! Please!”

The man grabbed her forcefully and said, “Don’t tell me how to do my job.”

Sherry started fighting back and trying to get out of the man’s grasp with a “Stop! Let me go! Let me go!” 

Claire made her way to the shard of glass to cut her zip tie on. The agent behind her, who had tried to keep up an impassive face until that moment, finally lost his resolve and was straining out of his zip tie and was moving towards his gun again.

The lunatic continued in response to Sherry’s jostling, “Obviously, no one taught you any manners.” And then in a more sinister tone, “We’ll fix that.” It rubbed Claire the wrong way and she worked on the shard faster. The agent had already got his again and was pulling against his zip tie, struggling towards another shard of glass with a similar idea to Claire.

A small pendant dropped from Sherry’s neck. Claire tore the zip tie just as the gate closed back under them. She kicked the closing gate and yelled in a fury, “I’LL GET YOU, YOU FUCKER!”

Suddenly, a gunshot rang out. He whizzed right past the fucker’s head, causing him to look back in fear. The agent yelled to him as well, “I’M COMING FOR YOU, YOU SON OF A BITCH!” His handgun was smoking in his hand and Claire knew without a certainty he could have killed the man if he hadn’t held himself back. 

The agent made his way towards the door the asshole had come from. Claire scooped up Sherry’s pendant and ran at him. “What the fuck was that? Why didn’t you take him down?”

He stopped. She stared at the agent’s face. What the fuck was going on in that head of his?

He looked at her and sighed. “Look, Claire. I – I want to. But…I can’t. Not now at least. We can’t let Sherry be on the streets alone. He  _ will _ get what’s coming for him.”

Claire stared at the agent again. She accepted it for now. She would find out what was up with him later. They needed to get Sherry back first and foremost. “Ok. Keycard first, then that asshole gets what’s coming to him.”

Through the door he had come out of, Claire found a pamphlet advertising Chief Irons. She had always heard bad things about the man from Chris. “That…bastard is the police chief?!”

The agent looked up from the gun and said, “The one and only.” Before she could ask, he raised his hand and said, “Chris told me.”

The agent looked over at the elevator and then the door beside them. “Don’t suppose you’ve already got the diamond key?”

Claire shook her head. Why were there specialised keys? What was this? 

The agent swore and led her back out the door. They went through the other open door in the parking garage. Through one door, in the firing range, they got a key for one of the police cars outside. Through another, there was the kennel. The agent stopped her outside the door and whispered, “There’re Lickers in there. Get your grenade launcher out.”

That cheered her up immediately. She loved to watch those fuckers burn. This was revenge. The agent opened the door and she let a round hit the closest Licker setting it on fire. There were 3 Lickers in that very area, literal overkill.

They got to the morgue where Claire found an autopsy report on a kleptomaniac. She read through it, figuring he probably stole something important, maybe even the diamond key. As she turned back to the agent with this information, he was already standing with the diamond key in hand. There were a handful of body trays open and all the corpses in them killed before they got up.

How had he known which body trays had ammo and herbs in them? Not just that, what about the diamond key? This man knew too much. 

The agent snapped his fingers, “Claire, you with me?”

She hadn’t realised she’d spaced out. “Yeah, I am. Let’s go up.”

***

Leon was fucking tired.

Yes, Claire had told him about Chief Irons, but honestly? Fuck him. He hated that Sherry was stuck with the bastard. He knew he couldn’t kill him now; the G would do that later anyway. But he had been  _ this _ close. 

As soon as he had roughly pulled Sherry, Leon’s resolve completely broke. He was on the kill. He tore out of the zip tie and brought his Sentinel Nine up to the Chief’s head. But then, he couldn’t. Doing that would change Sherry’s future, and he didn’t want a future where she wasn’t his daughter. Call him selfish, but he would  _ not _ let her die.

Claire opened the car boot and fished out a JMB Hp3. She handed it to him. He tried to wave it off – honestly, he was fine with just a handgun for now as long as he had enough ammo and he had his trusty Desert Eagle hidden away. However, Claire insisted, “You literally only have a handgun, dude. Just keep it.”

As they got into the elevator, he started thinking about what would have happened if the T-Virus had never spread. He would have actually joined the R.P.D. and Lt. Branagh would have actually been his Lieutenant. Chris, Jill and Barry would still be in the S.T.A.R.S. unit. He never would have met Ada. He might even have been able to meet Claire through Chris. Maybe he and Chris could still be a thing. Good things.

But he would never have met Sherry. She wouldn’t be his daughter. He never would’ve met Benford, a true friend to him. Umbrella would continue their agenda. Chief Irons might have even been his Chief. 

He shuddered at the thought. He would take a zombie outbreak any day over that fucker. “Glad he wasn’t ever my Chief.”

When Claire asked, “What?”, he realised he had said the last thing out loud. He would have to say something now. Dammit.

“I worked as an R.P.D. officer temporarily before joining the government.” That would probably make sense. If Claire really thought he was from this time period, then it might work out.

“How old are you? You don’t look older than 25 but now…” she trailed off. Leon got that a lot. Way too much.

“Hah. Yeah, I get that a lot. I’m actually turning 40 next month. I know what I look like.” Claire was openly snorting now. “Yeah, hit me. I’m ready.” The snorts turned to full-on laughter. “You can stop now.” She doubled over. “Anytime now.”

When the elevator opened up, she finally stopped. “Jesus, you’re 40 and you fight  _ zombies _ . Mad respect, dude.”

“Thanks. I think. Come on, let’s go get Sherry.” They walked into the Chief’s office which was filled with way too much taxidermy than was normal. Leon had never had the Heart Key and he’d never been here when he was here. He was happy for that. He hated that he had actually tried to defend Irons to the reporter in the jail cell back downstairs. The more he found out about the man, the more he wished he had just killed him.

They entered the side door, which naturally had more taxidermy. Finally, it opened up to a smaller jail cell filled with parking garage keycards, tantalisingly close but too far away to actively grab. There was a camera watching them. He had no doubt it was Irons on the other side. He smirked at it, and promptly shot it. He didn’t need Irons watching them. They had bigger things to worry about.

The jail was locked by a puzzle, similar to the one locking the jails in the basement. He needed the power panel parts here as well. Just great. 

Claire had wandered to the other side of the room, where she found a report on where the power panel parts could be found, the east storage room and once again, the clocktower. There was also a small relief. She picked it and turned it around, revealing that the Heart Key had been taped to the back of it.

She nodded at him. “Let’s go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope i kind of justified leon's actions. idk the man's an enigma. this chapter was quite a bit of filler, sorry about that. it's gonna be a bit like this until chapter 6 so just hang tight until then y'all.   
> also claire's reaction to leon's age is real-time footage of me. i don't know why but it's just so hard for me to imagine leon as actually being 40 years old no offence to anyone out there.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uh, mr. x? how do you write this man? as someone who still hasn't played the game (big sad) i don't actually know just how anxiety-inducing the guy is so he's just...here? big oof

Claire still didn’t know what to think of the agent.

He hadn’t tried to stop the bastard until the very end, but he did seem to care for Sherry. He even sounded remorseful that he hadn’t killed the guy.

Other than that, she still didn’t trust him. He claimed to know Chris, he claimed to know of Raccoon, he even claimed that he was supposed to work for the R.P.D. before, whenever before was. He knew more than he was letting on, and Claire hated it when people didn’t tell her anything. 

Before they went up to the 3rd floor (like they were supposed to), he led her down to the 1st floor instead. According to the map, this was where the interrogation and observation rooms were. They couldn’t enter the observation room as that needed a Club Key. Thankfully, the other door used a Heart Key, letting them in. 

He picked up a fancy box, holding it in her face. “I take it you got that jewel from the statue?” She nodded, though, again she didn’t know how he knew that. This was feeling really repetitive.

Suddenly, a Licker smashed through the glass and the both of them were slammed to the ground. The agent rolled up and aimed his gun in its face. However, Claire was faster and stayed on the ground as she sent a flame round into its ugly face.

As the Licker burned to death, the agent shook his head while Claire stood up. He muttered something to himself too soft for her to hear. He looked at her and asked, “You okay?”

She said, “Yeah. That Licker really came out of nowhere, huh?”

He gave her a weak smile and vaulted into the observation room through the broken window. He collected some gunpowder and a safe code and climbed back through.

The agent put a few bullets into the skull of a zombie they passed on the way, downing it. They made a stop at the Chief’s office again to pick up the jewel and open the fancy box. Inside was a S.T.A.R.S. badge. The agent turned it around and pushed a button on the back, exposing it as a USB dongle key. 

Now, she could get that sweet SMG. Nice.

They finally went up to the 3rd floor and entered the closest door for the storage room. There were 2 zombies and they both took one each. She unlocked the heart door and took the power panel part from inside the box. The agent stayed outside and had picked up a large gear. When she looked questioningly at it, he just shrugged and muttered something about the clocktower.

Claire went back down the stairs to put the power panel part back into its area while the agent stayed upstairs waiting for her. He was looking a bit antsy but she had no idea why. She hoped there wasn’t anything else in this police station.

***

Leon was antsy. 

He knew that he had encountered ‘Mr. X’ right outside on the balcony after setting out the flames on the helicopter.

He had seen the Tyrant much earlier in his run through the police station originally but Claire seemed to not know anything about it. If she did, she would have already said something about its dapper look.

So, she would probably meet him here for the first time. He wasn’t looking forward to seeing another Mr. X. After the Eastern Slav Republic, he had hoped to never see one again in his life. 

Whatever. This was his fucking life now. He sighed again. 

Claire had made her way back up to him. She was a lot cheerier now since they were halfway to saving Sherry. He couldn’t wait either. He just didn’t want the Tyrant to absolutely ruin everything.

They went out into the balcony and made their way down the ladder. He and Claire got down easily. He hid a smirk as he thought of how his younger self had broken it almost immediately. 

The helicopter was still ablaze from the crash so he took Claire down the stairs to the water lever. The door below was sealed, which was really weird but he overlooked it as Claire took down the few zombies coming for them. He hadn’t really ever worked with Claire apart from their limited time together here and the Harvardville airport. He had forgotten she was just as deadly as her brother. He wouldn’t forget it now.

He pulled the lever to change the water direction for dousing the helicopter and they went back up. She pulled down the lever up top and they walked into the alley. He subconsciously pulled out his Sentinel Nine. 

Claire looked worriedly at him. He said, “Something’s coming. Be careful. Don’t get trigger-happy.” She pulled out her SLS60.

They turned the corridor and there he was, the great grey prune himself. Claire let out a “What the fuck is that?” 

She had gone stock-still and was staring at it in shock. Leon grabbed her arm and snapped her out of it. “Come on! We need to get around it, lure it out.”

She complied, still very much in shock, and they ran out. The Tyrant followed them out as Leon just led them around it outside before going back into the corridor and past the crashed helicopter. He opened the safe in the waiting room and took out the extended clip for the JMB Hp3 and attached it to his gun. 

They got out to the main hall where another surprise waited for them. Marvin had now completely turned.

Maybe once, Leon wouldn’t have the heart to kill him. He would try to keep him alive and run past him but he wasn’t the same as before. Especially after Adam. He pulled the trigger and kept Marvin down long enough for them to run past. 

He knew the Tyrant had lost them for now. The one good thing about it was that it had no sense of object permanence. It would come for them soon, though. They had to be ready. He got all his guns fully loaded and ready. He could see Claire do that as well.

Finally, she said, “What was that thing and why does it have a fedora?”

Leon almost snorted at her final statement before he answered. It wouldn’t do any of them any good if he hid it. “It’s a Tyrant. It’s been ordered to kill any survivors and it will do its best to hunt us down as well. We gotta keep moving, find better ammo and get out here as fast as possible. We can’t kill it, unless we can obliterate it. But, we can’t. So, we have to keep moving and stay silent. It tracks by sound. I don’t know why there’s a fedora though.”

Claire looked like she believed him. Which was good. But she still had one more question. “How do you know this?”

“Tyrants have been sent to silence me a lot more often than this.” He smirked. “Haven’t died yet. Don’t forget the S.T.A.R.S. badge, we’re going to get you an SMG.”

~

They made their way through the west office, killing a Licker and getting to the Records room. Leon grabbed the jack handle he knew was there and they set off again. 

After multiple undead encounters throughout his life, Leon’s ears were a lot more sensitive to growls or stomps in the distance. The big guy didn’t seem to be in the main hall but he still motioned for them to be silent. He could hear him stomping on the above floor and they stayed under the door for shelter. He walked off to the east side, giving him and Claire some time to run around on the west side.

They hurried up to the library. Leon inserted the jack handle into the handle, which caused the bookcase to lower with a crash. Claire raised her eyebrow. 

“The noise’ll attract him here but we’ll be long gone. He’ll leave again, gives us more time.”

Claire looked unconvinced but nodded. _ Looks like she really wants that SMG. _

They went through the lounge and into the linen door first. That door gave them another portable safe, with another spare key inside. Claire apparently had no shits left to give and promptly killed the Licker in the hallway. She worked the safe the rest of the way. Finally in the office, Leon slotted the USB key into the slot and the armoury opened up. 

Claire had run in and grabbed the SMG immediately. She loaded it up with the ammo inside as well. She looked happier than she had until that moment. Leon gave her a soft smile while he took back the USB dongle. He knew it would be useful for later. 

He was pretty sure it couldn’t enter the office so they were safe in there for now. Meanwhile, Claire had gone from staring at the SMG in true love to looking at the letter Chris had left in the armoury. 

He knew how she’d react. Hell, he’d reacted weirdly even without knowing Chris back then. Claire exclaimed, “This does not sound like Chris.”

She looked at Leon. “Is this the Chris you know? I knew there was something off about him during that call.”

Leon shook his head emphatically. “It’s really not. Chris doesn’t always mean what he says, you know.” 

He checked outside before they left. Despite what he’d said to Claire about the Tyrants, they still gave him major anxiety. He counted himself lucky he hadn’t had to deal with Nemesis like Jill. And that nobody had managed to perfect another Nemesis.

~

He got them down to the security deposit room again despite the Lickers teeming in the hallway. They could use the final spare part to get the rest of the equipment inside. Claire got everything while Leon covered the door in case anyone wanted to get inside. 

They had to make sure they never used much ammo. He knew for a fact that the Tyrant could track them by their gunshots. They avoided most of the zombies and tried to keep away as much as possible.

Finally, they got back to the library. Leon remembered this part had given him a major headache last time. He had to move the bookcases while still avoiding Mr. X who arrived almost as soon as he’d started.

At least Claire had backup here. He told her, “The Tyrant’s going to appear almost as soon as we start moving these. I’ll try and keep him off you. Focus on moving them.”

Claire gave him a weird salute, crossing her eyes and sticking her tongue out cheekily. “Sure thing, Mr. Agent.”

He shook his head and hid a fond smile from his face. He took up a position on the staircase which directly overlooked the entrance. He noted the lack of zombies, most of them were dead, which was a relief. He thanked that Redfield fighting spirit again, he didn’t need zombies right now.

He shot a thumbs-up at Claire to tell her they could start and she nodded back. She started the long, stressful process of hauling the bookcases over. 

Sure enough, she was done with the first one when Mr. X appeared. He made his way towards Claire and Leon could see her twitch and hesitate from the sheer hulking mass walking towards her. 

Before he could reach her however, Leon let loose a normal bullet into the idiot’s head. He just needed its attention. He could save the heavy ammo for  _ real _ danger. He wouldn’t let the thing touch her, not if he could help it.

It startled for a second and Leon shot once more. He had done his best to conserve his ammo, putting only 1 or 2 bullets into zombies to startle or drop them for later. Claire before him had taken the extremist approach, killing as many as she could efficiently. That was also very useful.

The Tyrant finally looked up and saw him and changed targets, heading up the stairs to get him. Leon had planned for this and he was ready. Claire had already started on the second bookcase, good on her. 

Leon got up and ran to the other side, where the ladder near Claire was. He jumped down, he didn’t believe in ladders anyway. He ran back towards the stairs which Mr. X was slowly making his way up on. He had forgotten how slow some of the earlier Umbrella work could be after the Plaga and J’avo.

He put 3 more rounds in its skull and reloaded, turning it back towards him. It didn’t change its course, though and jumped down just as Leon had. 

Claire instinctively let go of the bookcases and ran towards him. He didn’t fault her at all – she was done anyway – and he could see what her plan was. She waited until he got closer to them and put a flame round in him. Leon put 5 more bullets into its head as well. Without stopping and with the Tyrant’s full attention, he yelled out to Claire, “I’ll take this thing around. Get ready for me when I get back.”

Before she could protest, he was out the lounge door with Mr. X on his heels.

~

Leon had already planned out the route he was taking. He would take the corridor all the way to the stairs, hide out in one of his certified Safe Rooms back on the 1st floor, and when it had wandered off, he could make his way back through the 3rd floor.

All the zombies in his way got a bullet in the face each and he got to his safe room. He could hear Mr. X trooping outside but finally the noise receded towards the west offices. Leon sighed in relief and crept up to the 3rd floor again. He hoped the Tyrant hadn’t gone after Claire in that short timespan.

He unlocked the locker up top and got some submachine gun ammo for Claire before getting into the west storage room. He was so thankful that Claire always insisted on killing the Lickers. If this one had been up, it would’ve ruined his whole plan.

He exited back out into the library and joined Claire. Claire sighed in relief and then promptly smacked him. “What the hell was that, you idiot? Were you  _ trying _ to get yourself killed? How dare you!”

Leon brushed it off with a “So she does care about me,” and walked into the main hall’s balcony. He knew there were 2 zombies already waiting there for them and he shot one and evaded another.

Claire stumbled after him, and while she obviously didn’t like what he’d said to her, she understood she couldn’t go yelling at him while the Tyrant was still looking for them. It’d find them easily after this though.

Once they got into the clocktower room, she rounded on him again. This time though, she sounded a lot more resigned. “If you’re going to pull that shit again, at least keep the SMG on you.” He knew that that was a lot coming from her and he didn’t try to protest. At least it would make things easier when he inevitably did the same thing.

He brought out the large gear and put it in the closest panel, opening the staircase. He took the gear back out and gave it to Claire, who was making her way up the stairs. She took it and went up. 

She brought back just the small gear and Leon put it in the other gearbox. Suddenly, the bell started chiming and the power panel part was knocked to the ground. Claire whispered, “That worked.” And if that didn’t summarise their whole lives, Leon wouldn’t know what would.

She grabbed the part and they got back out. Leon peeked outside to see Mr. X heading back towards the library. He muttered, “That’s lucky,” before motioning for Claire to leave the room with him. They did a fairly good job of sneaking out before he accidentally stomped too hard or some shit because suddenly the Tyrant turned to them and thundered towards them.

He muttered, “ _ Bruh _ ,” before both of them picked up the pace and started running from it all the way to the other end of the balcony for the storage room. Claire also made a small squawk which she would later deny she ever made. Thankfully, it was pretty slow compared to them and they got all the way through the storage room and down the stairs to the Chief’s office.

Now, they could get Sherry back.

Claire put the power panel part into the kit and worked the puzzle. When she finally got it, the door swung open. Leon swiped a keycard as Claire reached for the phone. He remembered he had shot the camera out, which wouldn’t let Irons see them coming.

He motioned for Claire to stop and he picked up the phone himself. Irons seemed to be winding up for a whole speech but Leon cut him off immediately. “Hey? Asshole? Yeah, I’m talking to you. I know exactly where you are, you fucker. I’m going to get there and save Sherry. Preferably kill you too. See you soon, bastard.”

He put down the phone and turned to Claire who was staring at him in admiration. “Thank you for doing that. Did you actually know where they were this whole time?”

Leon nodded. “Yeah, they’re at the orphanage.”

Claire raised her hands in despair. “Who even told you _ that _ ?”

Leon whispered, soft enough that Claire couldn’t hear him. “You did.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> now i actually have an excuse to link my tumblr again because i changed my url like an edgy nerd so you can now find me [here](https://solulater.tumblr.com/)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter 6 here we go. for some reason this chapter doubled in length and there's so much in it i probably should've just cut it in half but who cares. here, have at least 30mins of gameplay condensed to 4k.

Sherry was scared.

Mr. Irons had made her tie up Claire and Mr. Agent, then he had hurt them and taken her to the orphanage. She had been locked inside one of the rooms and she was scared.

Left in the darkness, she knew she had to get out. She had to escape and find Claire and Mr. Agent again.

Feet shadows appeared at the door. Mr. Irons called out in a sickly-sweet voice, “Don’t worry, Sherry. It’ll be all over soon.”

As the footsteps became quieter, Sherry stared out the window. The rain was pelting outside. She whispered to herself. “There has to be a way out of here.”

She remembered Mr. Agent’s words to her when she tied him up. “I don’t want you to get hurt, okay? Listen to him for now. But, when you can, find an escape. I know you can do it.”

She had also been scared then, but she had nodded back to him. Now, she had a chance. She could do it. She had to be strong and escape.

She got up off the bed and started looking around. There was a doll kept on the chair next to her. It looked disgusting but it had been the only thing she could look at for some time. There was something weird about it so she picked it up. She turned it around to see the zipper on the back and – there was a block stuffed inside!

Looking around the room, she could see some cardboard taped to the wall on one side. That could be her escape! But…she didn’t have anything to break the cardboard with. She continued searching. There had to be something.

She found a small block puzzle nearer to the door. It was missing one and she put the block she’d found inside it. It fit! She took some time to figure out the puzzle and even though it had wasted some of her time, it gave her scissors!

She could cut off the cardboard now. She pulled the scissors through and it opened up to a small room. She muttered, “What…is this?” It was like a small office. On the computer, it was showing a video of…the room she was in? She had to leave  _ now _ .

She creeped out the door and looked around. Mr. Irons didn’t seem to be anywhere close by. She looked at the next room, which was blocked off by some furniture keeping the door shut. She turned the corner and saw – there weren’t any more doors! She was about to try to sneak in by the blocked door until she noticed something.

The dresser had a warning on the side saying, ‘Danger: No climbing.’ There was an open window just big enough for her next to the top of the dresser. She smiled at it and started climbing. Mr. Agent said to find an escape and she would!

She jumped through the window and found herself in that same room which was blocked off just before. She instinctively crouched. She knew, and she didn’t know why, she just knew she would have to hide here.

She got out safely and reached the main reception area and the doors! She hurried down the stairs and said, “That must be the door out of here!”

She approached it excitedly but when she tried to open it, it was locked. She whispered, “Darn it. I need the key.”

At least there was another door beside the reception desk. She creeped through the hallways until she saw a silhouette pass behind a window. She crouched again and gasped. “Oh no, it’s him!”

The creepy opera music got louder and louder as she creeped into the room. She got up again when she saw it was empty. She wished she hadn’t. There was a girl lying on a table in the middle of the room. She was…she was dead! Mr. Irons was crazy!

Behind the table, she could see the key hanging from the wall! She put her thoughts of the girl aside because she couldn’t think of her now, she had to keep going. She reached up to get the key when suddenly, the music stopped and Mr. Irons appeared from behind a curtain.

He said, “Where you goin’, Sherry?” and started coming towards her. She backed away as fast as possible.

He pocketed the key she needed and then faced her again to say, “I told you to stay put. You need to learn to listen.”

She had backed herself against  _ the _ table and she pleaded with Mr. Irons. “Leave me alone! Just, please…”

He kept approaching her and he said, “Time to teach some manners.”

Sherry didn’t know what to do. Mr. Irons was coming closer. She remembered Claire, who had found some glass on the floor to cut out of her zip tie to try and save her. She had used her surroundings – maybe Sherry could too!

She looked around for anything and she hit against the table again. A bottle rocked from the impact. She immediately picked it up and threw it in Mr. Irons face. She started running as it started to burn his face.

She ran out of the door and closed it quickly, trying not to listen to Mr. Irons. He was cursing her, but she wouldn’t stop. She had to keep going, for Claire and Mr. Agent!

She ran out into the foyer and back up the stairs since she couldn’t go out. Her instincts were right, she did have to hide in that room. He yelled up at her, “You stupid bitch! That’s a dead end!” but she didn’t care.

She barged into the room and ran to the back, crouching behind a dresser. She couldn’t get anywhere else apart from there. Hopefully, he didn’t know that.

He got into the room and locked it behind him. He yelled out, “It’s all over now! Door’s locked!”

He kept moving closer to her and she kept shimmying away. She had to calm herself down or she would give herself away. She had to stay silent!

He moved a table near her but then moved away. She kept turning. If he found her, it would be over.

Suddenly, he doubled over and clutched his face. He cursed and moved further away. This could be her chance! She quickly manoeuvred around him and moved into the other alley made by the blocks and tables.

She hid beneath a table and cowered. She kept her knees clenched around her hands as she sat in wait. She hoped he wouldn’t see her. She couldn’t let him!

He came closer and closer to her. Her breathing hitched. Just as he would be about to see her, he doubled over again.

He yelled, “It burns!” and ran past her hiding place, giving her brief relief. He took out the keys and used them to unlock the door in front of them, to a small toilet.  _ He left the keys in the keyhole!  _ She remembered Mr. Agent kicking the gun from Mr. Irons hand as he tried to shoot Claire and hatched a plan.

As soon as he put his face in the water, she made a break for it. She grabbed the keys and ran. He saw her as she was crossing the room, but she quickly unlocked the door and ran down the stairs again.

She whispered to herself, “Hurry! Gotta hurry!”

Sherry got to the main door and tried opening it. Just as she was feeling hopeful that she could escape, it didn’t open! There was a lock on the outside!

Mr. Irons had appeared on the balcony and he laughed down at her, “Nice try, Sherry!” He charged down the alley and stairs. She ran to the other door present and quickly unlocked it as well. She locked it behind her just as Mr. Irons was coming and backed away from the door.

Suddenly, an axe plunged through the wood and his voice rang out. “I’m coming in, Sherry!” Sherry let out a shrill scream and ran further. She could hear the axe hacking at the door and she didn’t look back.

She got through the door and closed it behind her. She hid behind the table and clenched her knees to her hands again.

Mr. Irons burst through the door and came for her again. Sherry ran to the other side of the table but she wasn’t quick enough. He caught her yelling, “The game is over!”

She let out a protest but it went unheard under Mr. Irons yelling. “Now you’re in trouble!”

She struggled against his grasp. She had  _ failed. She hadn’t been quick enough _ . “Let me go!”

Suddenly, a big, orange eye blinked behind them and she let out another shrill yell. Mr. Irons dropped her and turned around, only for the monster to inject something into his mouth.

It was  _ her dad _ . She yelled at the monster, “No, stop!” but it was too late. Mr. Irons was infected and the monster would look for her now.

She hid behind the table again and tried not to cry as she thought of Claire and Mr. Agent.

***

Claire was ready to take that bastard down.

She wondered how the agent had known where said bastard was, but y’know, don’t look a gift zombie in the mouth. She just wanted to get Sherry.

They got back down to the basement without a hassle but as soon as she inserted the keycard in the slot, who else but the fucking Tyrant appeared! She let out a fed-up yell, “You again?!” as she ran around the parking garage to get some distance.

The agent followed after her. At least he had some  _ inkling _ of self-preservation. This man didn’t seem to get it, huh? She pulled up her grenade launcher and fired an acid round into the beast, which staggered it for a moment. She followed it with another while the man next to her unloaded with the SMG.

After maybe 15 shots, he stopped, just in time for the Tyrant to take a knee. She knew it was in no way dead, she had downed it too many times for it to have died now, but it did give them so time to make a break for it.

They dashed out of the parking garage and with one side of the road completely blocked, they headed straight for the other. The Tyrant wouldn’t stay down for long.

However, as soon as they got close, Claire could see the road had been taken down. “Shit! Looks like it’s the other way!”

The agent’s eyebrows raised by a fraction, the most emoting she had seen him do. “Where do we go then?”

“I don’t fucking know! You’re the one that knows where we’re supposed to go!” she shot back in exasperation. Almost like a much better answer to his question than what she’d given him, a zombie burst out a chain-link fence right next to the gun shop. They looked at each other, the agent shrugging at her, and they went for the door.

The agent took out the zombies’ legs with the SMG, toppling them and giving them time to get through the alley onto a walkway.

She said, “Looks like the only way forward.” She looked back to see the agent, who again shrugged in response. It led them out behind the gun shop where in the distance, she could already see what could only be the orphanage.

Both of them had stashed their heavier artillery for their handguns, sensing that the Tyrant would be off their tails for now. After killing some of the mutated dogs (which still hurt Claire everytime she did it) and traversing through traffic (the true horror of the zombie apocalypse), they finally reached the orphanage gates.

As they got in, she shut the gates and barred them immediately with new vigour. “Hang on, Sherry,” she whispered. The man beside her heard her and nodded in solidarity.

They burst through the doors of the orphanage and the agent called out. “Hello? Are you dead yet, you asshole?”

Claire stared at him for a second and shook her head. They had other things to do. Her intuition said to enter the door right beside the main desk and she and the agent went in. She took point. If anything was going to happen, like she felt would, a grenade launcher would be very handy.

As soon as they turned a corner in the corridor, a groaning, in-pain Chief Irons appeared with half his face melting. He noticed her and grabbed her by the shoulders. He stammered out, “Your fault…Took too…long!”

_ Bitch, what the fuck?  _ When he doubled up once again, she pushed him off with a “Get off!” and he fell on the floor.

He muttered, “Damn you William,” as something burst out of his chest and crawled away to die. It left her in shock, reminding her too closely of the late-night horror movies she would watch with Chris.

The chestburster gave the agent chills as well, but for a different reason. “Shit! It’s here. Sherry!”

He ran into the room to find her, with Claire trailing behind. As they walked through the room, Claire saw a dead girl lie crushed by a table. Her heart broke at the sight. That fucking bastard had got what he deserved.

The agent’s eyes grew just a bit heavier at the sight but he quickly turned around and continued his search of the room, finding an open trapdoor. He gestured at her and started down the ladder. She followed suit.

She yelled out, “Sherry! Where are you?”

The agent had his gun on the ready again, prompting her to pull hers out. She knew she had good instincts, but the agent’s were better than hers by a long shot.

He led the way down the stairs and suddenly, she heard Sherry’s voice ring out. “Claire? Mr. Agent!”

She was behind another chain-link and this time the agent said, “We’ll be right there.”

Just as they crossed to the other side to reunite with Sherry again, a thundering crash echoed throughout the room followed the tell-tale stomps of the Tyrant. Sherry let out a shrill yell and Claire ran to her side immediately.

She got them running (“Go! Go, go!”) and almost instinctively they had formed a line, with Claire leading and the agent bringing up the rear. She could almost hear him mutter, “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

Sherry yelled again, “It’s behind you, Mr. Agent!” to which he gruffly replied with “Don’t stop!”

They raced down the steps and Claire didn’t look back. She found she actually trusted the agent with her literal back now.

Finally, they got into an elevator and Claire slammed the button as soon as she was inside. Sherry was running inside right behind her and the agent shimmying his way in. Just as the doors closed however, the Tyrant pulled them apart again.

Just as the agent had lined a shot, claws suddenly protruded through its chest. Behind it, they could see the mutant monster thing she had toppled over the railing back in the maintenance room.

The monster’s blond head reared up again and Sherry whispered, “Daddy…?”

Before Claire could even process that statement, a second head protruded from its neck, forcing Claire to watch in horror as the claws tore through the Tyrant, actually killing it.

Numerous things happened in quick succession. The Tyrant sank to its knees and the agent let out a groan and mumbled, “I knew there were more.” The monster reared again, as the doors closed and started to go down.

Sherry yelled again, “Daddy, no!” but it was too late. It jumped onto the lift, breaking it. Sherry screamed and in a big coincidence, both she and the agent yelled, “Fucking hell!” while the lift hurtled down into the darkness again.

~

She remembered waking up to Sherry’s face. She couldn’t do anything else and it was like she was trapped in her body. “Claire, are you alright? Can you hear me?”

The little girl jumped to the side and she knew she was trying to wake up the agent as well. She could faintly hear her saying something but she couldn’t quite catch it.

Sherry came back to her and tried to shake her awake. “He’s going to get us! Wake up! Wake up!”

Suddenly, the girl startled and ran off and Claire was left in her body, not knowing what would happen to her.

~

“Wake up,” a female voice rang out.

“Wake up,” it repeated itself more insistently with a snap of her fingers.

Claire woke up to a blinding light shining in her face and a rough outline of a woman. The woman continued, “Open your eyes. Hold still.”

Finally, the light retracted and she rolled over trying to get a sense of her surroundings. The woman muttered, “Not infected,” and walked away again.

Claire’s eyes scanned the wreckage all around her. She could see Mr. Agent in the corner talking in hushed tones to who was probably the not-Chris. But something was missing.  _ Someone. _ “Sherry?”

She struggled to get up and focused on the woman again, the one unknown quantity. She asserted again, “Where’s Sherry?”

The woman, who Claire could now see was in a lab coat and was making honest-to-goodness notes, startled again and her voice stilted. “Sherry…Sherry’s fine.”

Claire questioned her, “Do you know Sherry?”

The woman was muttering to herself again – “an impressive display of strength” – but Claire wouldn’t let it drop as she limped over. 

“What happened to her?”

The woman responded but on a different track. “We need to assess the situation. Who are you?”

Claire responded, “I’m Claire, and he – actually I don’t know who he is.”

The woman had retreated into herself again. “I didn’t foresee this.”

_ Gah, I don’t have time for this. _ “Excuse me, where is she?” When the lady didn’t respond, she spoke again, “Hello?” moving in front of her.

The lady was snapped from whatever trance she was in. “What? Oh, Annette. Tell me, what happened to William?”

Claire was taken aback. Who was William? “I don’t know. Who – who’s that?”

The lady – Annette – shot back. “The creature responsible for this.”

_ Oh my god, where is Sherry? _ “What…can you help me find Sherry?”

Annette started talking to herself again. “Seems to be evolving much faster than expected.” She started walking away.

Before Claire could fully ask her where she was going, she snapped back. “Look. I don’t have time to play 20 questions.” Ignoring Claire’s confused look, she continued. “Everything is under control.”

_ Lady, if this is your idea of ‘under control’ _ ...She tried again, “I need to find Sherry-” but Annette seemed to finally break. She almost yelled, “My daughter is  _ not _ your concern.”

She stormed through an exit and slammed the door behind her.

At that exact moment, the agent came back from his phone call with an even more disgruntled look on his face. “So, Annette locked us in here?”

Claire tried the door and to her surprise, it was still open. “Huh,” she muttered to herself. As they looked in to catch a breath for a second, she decided to actually start grilling the agent. She needed answers,  _ dammit _ . “Sherry’s her…daughter?”

The agent looked up from a file he had picked up and looked at her. “Yes, actually. It’s how I know them. This might help clear something up.”

He tossed the file to her and she caught it. It was titled “Report on G”. She flipped through and –  _ no. Oh my god. _

“So, this is the creature that we fought at the parking garage? The one that killed that ‘Tyrant’ – sent us here?” she struggled out. He just looked back at her and nodded.

“Why did Sherry call him dad…” she trailed off as her mind raced. It couldn’t be. “This is  _ actually _ her father? And that’s her mom? Oh my god, that is one dysfunctional family.”

The agent finally nodded. “You get it. There’s actually another layer there but it’s not important right now. But, yeah, that’s how I know them.”

Claire accepted this for now. “I don’t trust Annette with her damage control. We need to get Sherry.”

The agent looked at her fiercely. “Do you really think I trust her either? Come on,” and he jumped down through one of the broken grates on the floor. As he fell, she could almost hear him mutter, “Protect your shoulders around her.”

She resisted the urge to fold her arms and instead, jumped down behind him into a narrow corridor. She yelled out for Sherry. The agent side-eyed her but said nothing. They followed the corridor out into the… _ sewers _ ? Oh, come on!

But the agent hopped right in and she had no choice. “Now I’m going to smell like shit. Literally.”

The agent grinned back at her and jokingly said, “What, not a fan of sewers?” Oh, she was going to punch this man so hard he wouldn’t be able to feel his face anymore.

He led them through the waterway, bypassing certain doors and only taking them where they needed to go. Claire could see why though. Some doors needed a valve to open so they wouldn’t be able to get in anyway.

When they exited the waterway, a giant cable car was waiting for them. “A cable car? Here?” She looked at the agent for answers again.

He cricked his neck and said, “You know what? I’m getting tired of hiding everything. It’s to take us to the secret lab later.”

That stunned Claire. Secret lab. What the hell had she gotten herself into?  _ Focus. We need to get Sherry back. _ They continued up a ladder into a big monitor room where 2 zombies awaited them.

She actually was kind of happy to see them. The zombies were a nice constant through the Tyrant and the ‘G’, whatever that was. To think she hadn’t seen them for what must have been a good half hour.

Taking a leaf out of the agent’s book, she aimed for the legs this time, trying to topple them. Sure, they might still be nuisances for later but for now she didn’t need those creeps on her. While she tore through their leg tendons, the agent aimed for heads. How he still had ammo she would think about later.

He ran to the side while the zombies were dispatched for now and jumped down another grate without a second thought. Claire stared at him a second, then shrugged and jumped down as well.

She had jumped down to a wide observation room and she heard Annette’s voice over the loudspeaker. “Sherry, I told you. I cannot leave here until my work is done.”

She heard Sherry mutter, “That’s what you always say.” It sounded like it was coming from the window, where the agent already was staring down into.

As she approached it as well, Annette continued, “Why didn’t you stay in the house? It was safe there.”

Looking through the glass, Sherry was down there, surrounded by scrap heaps and waste. She tried calling out but it seemed like the glass was soundproof when Sherry didn’t respond to her. Instead, she told her mom, “I was scared,” and she could hear the quaver in the girl’s voice. Her heart ached. The agent’s face was once again a mask, yielding nothing. She couldn’t see his eyes, though, and that scared her.

Sherry called out, “Those things were everywhere and–” but she was interrupted by Annette. “You should’ve called the police! That’s what we taught you!”

Claire’s heart seized up. There wasn’t a police force anymore; what did she expect her to do? Damn this bitch.

Sherry tried again, “I did but nobody came. And you didn’t answer your phone so–”

Annette interrupted again and Claire was losing her patience. “Sherry, I don’t have time for this!” and just like that, the intercom system turned off.

Sherry started struggling and she doubled over. Claire got closer to the glass. What was happening to her? She fell down and keeled over. She started, “Oh no. Sherry! Sherry, I’m coming!”

She got back from the glass and put her hand on the agent’s shoulder. He had retreated into himself again and he was leaning on the glass for support now. She needed him at full right now, they  _ needed  _ to save Sherry – whatever was happening to her.

He finally got him to look up at her and his eyes were full of a rage she didn’t think anyone could have. He almost growled out, “She’s been infected. The G came for her. We need to get her out,  _ now _ .”

He walked over to the other side of the room which had the door to Sherry and immediately smacked the glass again, now with the full force of a battering ram. “Not this fucking chess puzzle  _ again _ !”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) i am perfectly allowed to reference aliens, it's not anachronistic what are you saying  
> 2) claire definitely should've put together william being the G since she heard sherry outright say that the thing was her dad but whatever. at least she kinda figures it out here ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯  
> ciao y'all.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello once again. I'm dropping this chapter a bit earlier than I normally do because I don't know if I'll get another chance to today. hope you like :-)

Leon was fucking done with this bullshit.

He had done many puzzles in his life, but this chess puzzle? Fuck it. He hated it when he did it the first time and he still hated it.

Claire had backed away from him and he knew he should calm down. His temper hadn’t gotten this bad since his spat with Chris back in the inn, which is to say, pretty recent. But,  _ godammit _ , Sherry was his family and even though he knew she would get out okay, it still hurt to see her like this.

He slowed his breathing and counted to 10. After the Redfields had staged an intervention for him, he had finally gotten a therapist and sometimes, it did help.

After he had somewhat controlled himself, he turned back to Claire. “I’m okay for now. Come on.”

Claire muttered behind him. “Fine. If you do that again though, I’m leaving you here.” Leon understood. He would be a liability if his emotional state endangered the mission and he couldn’t be a liability.

Claire wandered out into the small alcove where the chess pieces were kept and started looking around. Leon could see 2 chess pieces already on one side of the wall. He assumed there was another one on the other side.

He couldn’t remember much about this area, mostly because of the convoluted areas but also because he had burned the place out of his memory. He still knew about this puzzle, though.

Claire picked up one of the notes on the noticeboard and read off the clue to him. “ Pretty sure the rook and knight are on the same wall and the bishop and queen aren’t next to each other. The queen and rook were opposite each other, too .”

He shook his head in an effort to get rid of the incoming headache. He sighed heavily, “Okay, we’ll take care of this when we get all the pieces. We need to find them first.”

Claire nodded. “Fine by me. Let’s go.”

~

She grabbed the map and they exited the room. Leon pulled the lever that brought down the walkway and they stood in awkward silence while it lowered. Claire broke it. “What did you mean when you said ‘again’? Have you been here before?”

The walkway had lowered and Leon already started on it. He didn’t answer. He knew Claire would ask again anyway.

True to fashion, she did. “Hey! I asked you a question! I am getting damn tired of not getting any answers here!”

_ Damn, she was getting angry. _ He didn’t forget this woman had a grenade launcher on her person. “Okay, look. I can’t tell you a lot about myself. Who knows, maybe I’ll tell you later but I definitely can’t right now.”

He had led the duo to the cable car and picked up the valve handle. He looked back to Claire again. “Now, don’t you have something else to do?”

Claire blinked in surprise. “How – how did you know that?”

He shrugged again. Claire would be so pissed. “Intuition. Now write your letter and let’s go use this handle.”

She grumbled to herself and Leon pretended not to listen in as she wrote the note that his past self would pick up, planning his death at the same time. He picked up the report on the safe code for later and stood aside.

When she was done, they got out of there and continued to the other side of the walkway. He used his hand to indicate for her to wait and he went down the corridor to open the safe. Out of it, he got out a gun modification for Claire’s revolver. She would be happy to get it – hopefully enough to convince her not to kill him. He sneaked the blue herb out without disturbing the zombie and went back to Claire.

She happily took the gun mod and started applying it and Leon thought he was in the clear. Claire asked him, “How did you open the safe?” which wasn’t the question he expected but he took it.

“It was on the side in chalk. Found it in this report with the valve handle,” he said as he brought out the file from under his jacket.

Claire looked at him for another second before looking down at her gun again. She had already picked up some high-powered rounds and was now loading them into her gun. Leon had a feeling those bullets would be able to pack an extreme punch.

They headed through the only other door on the walkway, which led them down some stairs to 2 zombies staggering around down there. Leon stowed the SMG – he would save it for the ‘G’s they found down here – and brought out the JMB Hp3. He hadn’t touched it since he actually got it so it still had a full clip of 33 rounds. Very helpful.

As they got closer, he put 2 rounds into each of their heads. This gun wasn’t as strong as the Sentinel, but it would do for now. They were able to scoot around the zombies for now. They would have to come back to this room, hopefully these zombies wouldn’t be a nuisance for later.

He put the T-Bar into the slot on one side of the room and the door opened up with a groan. They walked through and walked along the small walkway. Claire spoke up, startling him for a second. “Hey, do you have a pet?”

That also threw him. “Wha – what?”

He turned around to look at her and she smirked at him. “So, the super sneaky agent can be startled. Anyway, you won’t tell me your name but I still get to know things about you. You said you’d try to tell me stuff. What, is telling me you have a pet going to ruin your secret mission?”

He shook his head fondly and turned back around to continue down the walkway. “Yes, I have a cat.”

He took the sewer key off the wall and pocketed it. He could hear Claire behind him say, “I should have realised.”

~

He hopped down into the waterway and Claire followed after. She took one look around and said, “This…this is creepy.”

Leon couldn’t help but echo her. Even though he had been here before, it still creeped him out. The whole walkway was filled with bulging, fleshy sacks. And the ‘G’s were here too. Oh, he hated sewers.

Yes, contrary to popular belief, he didn’t like sewers. Yeah, he had gotten used to them as a hazard of his job but that didn’t mean he liked them. They needed the plugs, though, and the king and queen plugs were down here.

Claire immediately broke away to pick up a green herb (Leon’s head supplied  _ blaze it _ ) and one of the G-embryos burst out of a zombie sitting nearby. Claire let out a yell of indignation and backed away. At least she would be sort of prepared for the Adults.

He climbed up onto the fleshy mass and passed by other zombies, who were ironically dead. Leon hadn’t met a ‘G’ since right here – damn, these things were such a one-off – but he still didn’t like them. Claire jumped up behind him hastily. She surveyed the dead zombies around her and almost whispered, “Jesus, they’re everywhere.”

Leon shook his head. “You haven’t seen anything yet. Keep your grenades ready,” he added, pointing to her belt where she had attached the grenades she had kept. She put a hand on them, and nodded at him.

They jumped back down into the waterway and Claire ogled the various intestines and offal around. Suddenly, the water in front of them rippled and the G lying inside floated downstream a little. He looked back at Claire to check up on her and her face was one of pure horror. Her mouth had dropped and her hands were gesturing to nothing in particular.

He waded closer and knew that they had to kill it to keep going. He looked back to Claire and mouthed,  _ grenade _ .

She pulled up her grenade launcher and loaded in an acid round. He backed out of the way as she aimed and fired. The G emerged from under the water’s surface and Leon brought up the JMB Hp3. “Aim for the lighter shoulder,” he said as he lined up 3 shots.

Claire obliged and fired another round straight into the shoulder. The flesh broke through and the big eye flashed out at them. Leon still didn’t know why all of these monsters had a big, flashy weak point but he would take it. He brought out the submachine gun again and fired into its eyeball, almost emptying its clip.

He must not have been paying enough attention, because the thing grabbed him and hoisted him up. It opened its weird-ass mouth and prepared to eat his head or whatever but not before he stuffed a grenade into its big maw, the firing pin in his hand.

It dropped him from the shock and he backed up as it exploded in the monster’s gullet. Claire added another acid round to its eye and it finally dropped dead.

Leon took stock of inventory. Claire probably had a handful of both kinds of ammo on her person for her grenade launcher and maybe 15 high-powered bullets for her revolver. He had quite a lot of clips for his MQ 11 left and he still had a clip for his sidearm.

They had enough ammo to kill the others but for his sanity, he would prefer not to. He was not going to waste his ammo on these Birkin rejects.

He motioned for Claire to come closer and told her, “If we can sneak around these guys, we should. Got it?”

Claire snorted and muttered, “You’re not the boss of me,” but she still holstered her grenade launcher and pulled out her revolver instead. Sure enough, just as they passed the corpse of the first one, another one popped out from behind a flesh mass.

Before she could unholster her grenade launcher, Leon put a hand on her shoulder and stopped her. He knew this thing would go back down. For now, at least. Sure enough, it did and sank below the surface, far enough away that they wouldn’t disturb it as they walked past.

Claire shrugged his hand off and kept going. He must have been doing something wrong, since she’d warmed up to him immediately in his 20s but the sass on her right now was next level. It probably was because he never told her anything about what was going on but hey, he wasn’t going to be the one responsible for the timeline’s combustion.

Just as they were this close to getting out of the room,  _ another _ G pulled itself through one of the huge pipes overlooking the area. Claire shot him a dirty look and he gave her one right back. They definitely could’ve just sneaked past it. “Whatever. Just one.”

She did an impression of his voice, “ _ Just one, _ ” (which for the record, wasn’t even close) and shot a round into the G. He yelled for her and they squeezed their way through this shitshow and headed up the stairs and through the door where they would be sort of safe.

As soon as they were through, Claire smacked him and stage-whispered, “What the fuck was that? Are those the Gs? But…how? Sherry’s dad doesn’t look like that!”

Claire was near hysteria. Leon raised his hands and softened his tone, “Yeah, those are the Gs. They’re probably humans that William infected but weren’t a match, unlike Sherry.”

Claire’s eyes widened. “Ok,  _ Mr. Agent _ , what the  _ fuck _ is going to happen to Sherry if we can’t get to her in time?”

Leon’s mask slipped for a second and he knew she could see the tiredness behind his eyes. “She’ll become like her dad.”

Claire brought up her hands and shook her head. “Hell no. We are not going to let that happen to her,  _ alright _ ? She is  _ not _ becoming that thing.”

Leon schooled his features back into the hard mask he kept on missions. He nodded fiercely, “Of course not. Now, come on. I’m pretty sure you get a new weapon here.”

~

He led the way again and they walked through a small storeroom before they were out into a small, weird room. He remembered he had gotten his flamethrower here. As far as he could remember, Claire had much better weapons than he got so what overpowered weapon would she get now?

Down the stairs, Claire immediately ran to the gate holding whatever she would get. She looked back at him in shock, “What the frick is that?” as she pointed through the gate at it.

Leon drew closer at a normal speed and,  _ yeah _ , what was that? He had a faint recollection of seeing it strapped to Claire’s back in the train but he had no idea what it was. For once in this weird time travel adventure, the DSO agent was at a loss.

He shrugged and told the truth, “I have no clue.”

Claire laughed, a short one that warmed Leon to the core. He hadn’t heard from her, her future self, in quite long. She was still working to try to get TerraSave back together after all the shit that happened on Sejm Island. He had to call her once he got back.

“…doesn’t know anything.” Claire said as she turned around with a twinkle in her eye. Leon mentally kicked himself for spacing out for so long. He faked a grumble and walked off to get the first chess piece. He could at least remember there were 2 here.

He knew taking one out would lock them into somewhere else. Claire just watched and followed in earnest. The puzzle was pretty sequential, though. Just follow the pathways opened up by the others and then get the gun…or whatever it was.

2 zombies dropped down from  _ somewhere _ – he swears these things can teleport – but Claire dropped them pretty quick. With Leon there, it was surprising that the amount of ammo there was enough for both of them. It helped that he had brought a few clips for his own gun.

He easily got the door open and Claire threw her arms around the thing. He stood back at the door to give them some privacy. He told her, “Save it for the Gs. I have a feeling this is gonna be hella powerful.”

“Don’t need to tell me twice,” she winked at him and they unlocked the door and made their way back to the actual waterways, not before Leon collected the 2 plugs on their way out.

***

Claire was excited to try this thing out.

What the fuck was it though? She could tell it was probably electric and maybe stunned enemies but that was as far she could tell. Her guns only got better though so it had to be good. She could feel the energy thrumming through the machine as she felt for the trigger.  _ Oh hohohohoho this is going to be cool _ .

As they exited the storeroom, the zombie from before had got back up but the agent put it back down almost immediately. One day, she would ask him how he got his skills but now was not the day. She aimed the gun at one of the Gs stumbling around and almost pressed the trigger before the agent put his hand up as a waiting signal.

He shot the weird ass shoulder a few times until it popped and the gross eye was revealed. Why all these things had those was weird but whatever. He gestured with his hands to let her know to go and by God, Claire was fucking ready.

She aimed for the eye and pressed the trigger. Suddenly, the gun sparked and electricity wreathed the eyeball. The G was stunned in place and Claire was floored. She kept her finger on the trigger on instinct and the electricity increased in intensity. She could only stare in cold fascination as its body started charring from the heat of the crackling halo of electricity.

And just as the electricity arrived, it dissipated.  _ Huh, that must have been a full charge _ , she thought. The monster crumpled over and died.

She looked back at the agent and she could almost see his eye twitching. She laughed, a soft, hysterical one, and exclaimed, “Holy  _ shit _ , this thing is nuts!”

He muttered something to himself that she couldn’t hear but at this point she didn’t care. This thing – what should she call it? The…the  _ Spark Shot _ . The Spark Shot was so overpowered, Mr. Birkin wouldn’t stand a  _ chance _ .

That reminded Claire of Sherry, though and she immediately sobered. They had to get to her, especially now that she knew what could happen to her if they couldn’t get to her in time. How much time had they wasted down here?

On the plus side, they now had 2 of the needed 3 plugs already. In her musing, the agent had hopped into the sewers and was looking at her expectantly. The asshole liked the sewers way too much. She hopped in behind him and followed.

They encountered 2 more Gs, which was definitely 1 more than they had left behind but again, whatever. They dispatched them the same way, the agent shooting it until its shoulder popped and she hit it with the Spark Shot.

She let the agent lead them back to the observation room as she started thinking. The one problem with her new weapon was that she didn’t have any extra ammo for it. She had already used 3 charges. She assumed that this was at a capacity of 7 needles so she had 4 left. She hoped she could get some more soon anyway.

She looked back to the agent who was leading them and downing any zombie that came close. For what must’ve been the seventh time, she found herself thinking about him. What the fuck was this guy’s deal?

He knew a lot of what was going on, way too much, but didn’t tell her anything. He didn’t seem to know a lot of smaller stuff, though, and he definitely didn’t know about her Spark Shot. He seemed very close with Sherry and acted with her in a similar manner that Chris had taken up after their parents died. Sherry didn’t know who he was though, that much was obvious.

“Hey,” she said, breaking the silence, “are you from the future or some shit like that?”

The agent looked back at her and his eyebrows went up. He was hiding something, though. She could tell. He just said in a flat tone, “Now what gave you  _ that _ idea?”

Claire decided to forego an explanation and instead tsked at him. But, honestly, it made a lot of sense. Why he knew what was going on. Why he knew the Birkins. But why would he be here? And how did he know everything like he had been here himself?

~

They went all the way back to the monitor room to drop off the plugs they had gotten and continued. Claire knew that she would explore this area by herself anyway but again, this agent knew that there was another plug in the opposite direction of the gore hallway.

He pulled a lever that opened a gate to the other side of the waterway. They hopped back down into the waterway, encountering one more G. She brought the Spark Shot back out again as the agent used the SMG to break apart the shoulder. One Spark and it was dead.

They moved past its corpse into one of the alcoves that held the bar for the T-Bar. The agent placed it in and turned the handle, opening the door. They followed through the corridor, picking up some ammo on the way and finally got in a lift.

The lift led up to the workroom (according to the map). The agent shot a lying zombie without a second thought, killing it in an instant. Even she could tell it was just playing possum and killing it was the right thing but still. The disconnected nature he did it in still freaked her out.

She looked around for more supplies and came across another hip pouch (“How many hip pouches are you  _ wearing _ ?” “Six. Thanks for your feedback.”) and more interestingly, a roll of film. It intrigued hert, especially since the only place that could develop film was the police station.

She looked at the agent who was staring at nothing and asked, “Are we going back?”, to which he replied with a shrug and a flat voice, “Sorry, no spoilers.” Why did he  _ shrug _ so much?

They exited out the room to a whole other part of the sewers she hadn’t seen yet. And 3 whole zombies waited for them, oh good. She had gotten normal ammo for her SLS60 and used it on their heads to drop them.

She could see the final plug in a wall socket but before she could snatch it, the agent held up his hand. He ran into the hallway and unlocked a door at the end, slipping in before the zombie sitting in wait there could catch up to his actions. Okay, this man wasn’t human.

He was back out without any warning and dropped any zombie near here. Before she could say anything, he held up some gunpowder he’d found. “You want acid rounds or can I get some more SMG ammo?”

“Me. You have a lot for your gun anyway.” She also noticed he was holding a VHS tape. He noticed her noticing and gestured back to wherever.

“There was a dead U.S.S. agent there with this VHS on him. Don’t worry, your regularly scheduled content will resume as soon as we get to a monitor.” Something nagged at Claire but she couldn’t tell what it was for now.

They went through the other door which required the key. Before going through, the agent just threw the key off the railing into the waterway with a softly murmured word which she swore sounded like  _ “yeet” _ . She shot him a confused look and he simply replied with, “We don’t need it anymore.”

“If you say so Mr. Agent,” she walked past him. The agent stayed behind her and he muttered again, “At least she isn’t mocking me.”

“Oh, I am.”

She collected the ammo and looked around. The agent was staring at one of the lockers in interest. He started pushing on it and then she noticed the obvious hole marks hidden by it. She joined him and together, they pushed it aside.

It opened up to a fancier lift, one that resembled the bastard’s or the one she took from under the police station to the machinery room. It went up to somewhere that strongly resembled the underground area and this time the agent led again. They walked up some stairs and turned into a room that was vaguely familiar to her.

Right next to them, there was a glass case holding what looked like a suppressor. It was closed with a lock that looked like a badge. The agent pulled out the S.T.A.R.S. badge from somewhere and slot it in.

He started outfitting his SMG with it and Claire asked, “Why do you still have that on you?”

“I just do,” was the response. Ok, this man had to know how much of an asshole he sounded like, right?

He led them up some more stairs, leading to another lift. And now her brain made the connection.

The lift opened up in the weird stair office and the agent used the T-Bar to open up the door again from the inside.

She almost whispered, “ _ No _ .” before the agent said, “Yeah, we’re back in the police station.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shitty cliffhanger once again. but happier note, we're at the halfway point now ! yay ! for the G, i actually used the actual guide for damage dealing and all that so it's all by the book, because i am very obsessive. also, leon DEFINITELY has a cat alright-


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *finger guns* fuck the chess puzzle that's all i'm saying

Leon didn’t want to spend any more time than necessary back in the police station. Call him paranoid but he didn’t know for sure if there were any more Tyrants. He had always suspected that there had been more than one Tyrant and now he had irrefutable proof. If he had killed the one that was following Claire, then how was there one following him? Take that, logic.

But yeah. If there were already 2 here, how was he to know if there were even more?

They were just out here to develop the film and preferably get some more ammo around there at the same time. They had William to fight after this and he wasn’t gonna waste his ammo if he could help it.

They slowly got to one of the safe rooms on the west side and developed the film. Both the films were of desks and Leon knew they were Wesker’s desk and the press room’s desk.

He was ready to get out of the police station as soon as possible so they split up, albeit with Claire’s protesting. After some grumbling, she headed to the other side of the police station to the press room while he headed up to the S.T.A.R.S. office.

Even though he was the one who had got them to split up, he still was worried for Claire. Being one of her friends for the past 2 decades had definitely made him a lot softer in regards to her. Then again, being her friend for 2 decades also taught him that she could take care of herself. Besides, she had a GM79 and also a gun that really acted like a Magnum. She would be  _ fine _ .

He made his way to the office without any trouble (unless you count zombies as trouble, but hey, one good roundhouse to the head and they were done for anyway). He unlocked Wesker’s desk and brought out a high-capacity magazine for the SMG. Nice. At least the dead bastard was good for something.

Something else in the desk caught his eye and when he picked it up, it was another photo. There was a note scrawled on the back saying ‘Rising Rookie’. He turned it around to look at the photo which was one of…Rebecca’s.

Okay, yeah. Fuck Wesker and Leon was once again thankful that Chris had finally killed him in the end.

To think he had just seen Rebecca in the past week and here she was, at 18. Leon would never forgive Umbrella for throwing everyone into this mess and at such a young age. He had come to terms with his own involvement but he would never be okay with everyone else’s fucked up lives because of these damn viruses.

And he was reminded. Claire was 19. How had he forgotten? She acted younger than that. But all joking aside, Jesus fuck. How had they managed to do this? Holy shit.

He had subconsciously moved out of Wesker’s office and he leant on someone else’s desk to calm his brain. He put his hand out to steady himself and his hand snagged on something else.

He picked it up and recognized the handwriting as Chris’. He smiled fondly. It was still as messy as it would be in 20 years time.

He looked through it and knew it was the note he had left to fake his story in Europe. It sounded nothing like Chris and it was kind of smart since Umbrella didn’t know him personally. Leon knew despite the playboy-like details of the note, Chris couldn’t help but put the note in for Claire. It was sad that it never got to her and her life still had to be like this.

All the note did was make Leon miss Chris more. He had been going on radio silence since their hurried talk after William attacked the lift. B.S.A.A. analysts had already arrived on scene and were already messing with the machine on-site. It didn’t let them communicate and Leon already missed hearing the voice in his ear.

He snapped out of his musings and carted his ass down to the darkroom-saferoom combo, hoping that Claire wouldn’t already be there waiting for him.

He was wrong and she was right there. “What the fuck took you so long? I have been here for  _ decades _ .”

He shook his head. “It has literally only been like 5 minutes.”

Claire pointed at him accusingly but there was no heat behind the gesture. “Let’s go, Mr. Agent. We’ve slouched around here for too long. I got more ammo for my Spark Shot and I want to test it out some more.”

~

They got back to the monitor room fine. And what if he’d suplexed a few zombies on the way? Man, if he was stuck here for now, he was at least going to try and have some kind of fun. And now they had to deal with the gosh darn puzzle.

Leon had already questioned it when he’d been here himself to save Ada back in ’98 but still – why? Why was there a  _ puzzle _ in the  _ sewer system _ of all places? What the actual fuck was with these random corporations and making weird puzzles that thoroughly annoyed him?  _ Ugh _ .

“Before we do that shit, can we watch this tape?” Leon asked.

Claire looked up at from the plugs she was staring at and stared at the VHS. She laughed nervously, “Almost forgot about that.”

“Show some empathy for that U.S.S. agent, why don’t you?” he joked and put the VHS in. For some reason, these damn tapes appeared in almost every place he’d been in. He would never forget how to operate them at this point, well after they would go extinct.

He put it in and turned the monitor on. He could still vaguely remember this exact tape from his own trek through the sewers. He knew that that was Birkin, who had smashed vials of the T-virus which had then seeped into the water supply. Also rats.

Claire looked enlightened and angry at the same time. “So that fucker is the one who spread this virus?”

Leon replied, “Technically.”

Claire marched over to the chess piece puzzle and stared at it. “Why is this so damn complicated? Why would anyone even build this? I swear to god.”

Leon muttered, “Story of my life,” and joined her at the chess puzzle.

After much jostling, yelling and general madness, they finally got the door open and the both of them rushed out. Claire immediately ran for the waste disposal door only to curse once more at the lack of power. He swears he does not remember her being this feral.

He just gestured to the other door on the farther side and said, “Come on, power’s this way,” and started walking.

Inside the power room, Claire busied herself with the little puzzle to bring back power while Leon stood behind her. He brought out the Sentinel again and his mind was in a frenzy. Would Birkin really attack now? The ceiling was perfectly fine. It was  _ fine _ , wasn’t it?

Just as soon as Claire turned away from the levers with a whoop and the light over the disposal unit turned green, the roof started caving and  _ oh shit, there’s a claw – the ceiling is NOT fine. _

***

“No! Your timing fucking sucks!” Claire yelled as what could only be Birkin’s hand-claw smashed through the metal roof.

The agent muttered something that sounded like, “Big mood,” but that didn’t matter right now. They were  _ this _ close to getting Sherry out of there. This was the worst possible time.

She stayed by the agent’s side. At this point, she fully acknowledged that his reflexes were much better than hers, probably a product of whatever training he went through. The man led her around the room, telling her to duck as soon as the claw appeared in her peripheral vision. Fires were starting in the room on account of the electrical appliances the thing was digging his claw through.

When she asked, he replied, “If we keep avoiding him, it’ll make him angry enough to come into the room and give us a way out.”

Sure enough, the agent was right and after they’d evaded the monster a few times, the huge aluminium shutter on the other side of the room started denting from the monster’s blows. He put himself in front of her as they stood beside the shutter.

It finally broke from the blows dealt to it and there stood Birkin…now with two heads? She didn’t have any time to think on it, though, as the agent full-sprinted at the monster and baseball-slid at the last moment, ducking under the monster’s hands to the other side. She muttered, “Show-off,” as she just ducked under it as the monster stared in confusion at the agent shooting it from behind.

They sprinted down the full-length of the walkway all the way to the clear arena waiting for them. She muttered, “Should’ve known you wouldn’t die,” and the agent gave her one of his small, strained smiles. Birkin was still hurtling for them behind them but he was slowed down from the monster muscle mass.

She hopped down to the platform with the agent on her tail. A huge shipping container took up a majority of the space. It was connected to a crane and there was a control panel with two buttons on the end of the platform. The agent said, “Press the button now!” at the same moment she came to the same conclusion.

“I got that!” she yelled back as she ran to the end and slammed the button, prompting the crane to move the shipping container out of the way.

The container started on its journey to the other side as Birkin jumped down to join them. She popped off an acid round, stunning the monster for a second. The agent jumped in with a barrage of bullets into one of the huge, bulbous eyes on its body. It popped and the monster wailed in agony.

It slumped and Claire went for the button again, saying, “I got you now.” The crane brought the container back. The agent popped the other eye, forcing the monster down again. Claire’s heart rose. If they could smack the monster off, they would be done with him.

The shipping container finally collided with Birkin and it caught him off guard. She almost heaved a sigh of relief before she saw that the monster’s claws had saved him as he clung onto the platform.

The agent took her indecisiveness and hit the button for her again. The crane moved off as Birkin gave a yell of anger and went straight for the two of them. They scattered, running to opposite sides.

The monster headed for her, which Claire was frankly offended by. Before she could duck out of the way, it grabbed her in a vice-like grip. Her arms were pinned to the side and Claire’s mind went dark.

Suddenly, the agent yelled out, “Shield your eyes!” She obliged and even without her sight, the white, hot light shining into her retinas and the ringing in her ears led her to believe that the agent had let off one of the flashbangs.

The monster had taken the brunt of it and dropped her in surprise. It waddled backwards and Claire took the moment to wildly swing for the return button, this time with a different one-liner. “Time for an encore.”

The agent had run up in front of her and landed a well-placed roundhouse kick on the monster, driving it back further right into the container’s destructive path. Somewhere in the hazes of her mind, she wondered how this man had the strength to drive such a beast back with just a kick.

The container pushed into the monster and now, even in its blinded state, it tried to push back. The container pushed harder though, until it and the monster were dangling over the edge. It tried to climb over and that was its mistake. The chain snapped and the whole container fell over the edge with the monster.

She stared over the edge to calm her mind down and assure herself it was done down here. The agent’s mind seemed to be on the same track as he looked down into the darkness and Claire thought she could see something unreadable in his eyes.

The wreckage caused by the plummet had created a small, semi-stable walkway to a door on the other side of the room. She headed off there, with the agent on her heels. She lamented, “I’m so sorry, Sherry. This is taking forever.”

She couldn’t see the agent’s expression but she knew it would be a mask of hardened rage and sadness. She didn’t know why but she felt like she knew him already, and believe her, she would remember if she had met this dude before.

She unlocked the door at the end, which thankfully was the door that was right outside Sherry’s prison. She hurried over and pulled the lever, hoping that Sherry was still okay for now.

~

As soon as the door started opening, she heard Annette’s voice filter through the speaker. “Sherry? Mommy’s here.”

As she listened, the voice became aggravated. “Sherry! Sherry, can you hear me?” Claire immediately ducked to look through into the waste disposal room and Sherry was right there, lying on the ground.

She muttered, “Oh no…” and ducked under the door. The agent followed suit but stayed behind her. She walked up to Sherry and the voice on the intercom changed its direction although she was only half listening.

“Sherry…Claire?  _ You _ ?”

Disregarding her, Claire kneeled down to Sherry’s side and almost asked if she was alright. Then, she remembered the agent’s cryptic message about the G and she knew that she wasn’t alright.

She tried lifting her up as the agent kneeled on Sherry’s other side. Sherry didn’t immediately respond but finally she coughed and Claire could cheer. They still had time – they could help her! But,  _ how _ ?

Annette tried talking to her again. “What are you doing?”

This time, Claire looked up into the camera she knew was integrated to the speaker. “I’m here to help.”

The voice responded with the finality of speaking of death. “Sherry’s been implanted…she can’t be saved.”

Claire filled with fury. “Are you fucking kidding me? You’re her  _ mother _ , get in here!”

The voice shook with an emotion she couldn’t place. “You don’t understand. William is still out there and if I don’t stop him- ”

The agent finally got up and stared at the camera, speaking for the first time since their fight with the G. “Listen up, Annette. We’re going to your lab for Sherry with or without you. The only difference’ll be if you help us. Now, will you?”

There was a short pause from the intercom system until finally Annette replied back. “There’s not enough time – millions of lives are at stake. Sherry…Mommy loves you, sweetie.”

Then with complete finality, “Goodbye.” The telltale beep from the system signalled that she had ended the transmission.

Claire spoke up again. “Are you fucking kidding me?” Then to Sherry, her voice turned soft, “Don’t worry, Sherry. I will get you whatever you need, ok?”

For a moment she didn’t think Sherry would respond but then in a pained whisper, the girl said, “Wh-why are you doing this?”

She didn’t even need to think about what to say. “Because I care.” She spoke to the agent, “Can you get us there?”

He nodded immediately. “It’s been a while but yes, I can.” He kneeled again and this time he scooped up Sherry in a bridal carry. Before she could ask, he just said, “You’ve got our weapons. Clear the way, Redfield.”

Instead of saying anything about that, she opted for a different track. “Cable car?”

She was in front of him and couldn’t see if he’d nodded but his tone made it clear. “Cable car.”

Turns out the agent didn’t need to give his excuse since the way was completely clear. Making fun of the agent could wait, though. They had to do something to save Sherry. She kept muttering, “Almost there, Sherry. Almost there.” What were her hands even for? Everything felt messed up.

When they got to the cable car, initially it denied access to her. The agent quickly brought Sherry closer to the door and the little bracelet on her arm opened it up. She ran to the front of the car looking for the controls. Behind her, the agent had set Sherry down on the seat and was talking to her.

Before she pulled the lever though, the agent spoke to her. “No turning back.”

She didn’t need to debate with herself whether or not to pull the lever. The robotic voice in the tram activated. “This train is bound for NEST. Do not leave until the final destination.”

~

She and the agent had swapped places halfway through the train ride, with her sitting next to Sherry and him pacing the length of the cable car nervously. One of Sherry’s eyes had already turned a disgusting shade of yellow and it vaguely resembled William’s first look but Claire wasn’t going to give up. They were going to save her.

She had been slightly unconscious for some time and Claire had carefully placed her jacket on her. The agent didn’t say anything.

Suddenly, she started squirming and groaning in pain. She put her hand on her shoulder and said, “Are you ok?” and for the third time since she was here, she recognized how ridiculous it sounded.

Sherry turned towards her and she whispered, “Your jacket’s so warm.”

Claire wanted to hug her but she didn’t out of fear it would hurt the girl. She was still working through the pain and she knew Sherry could get through this. She patted the arm of the jacket and whispered back. “My brother gave it to me. You know,” – her voice quivered a bit – “it’s supposed to be lucky.”

Sherry stared back up at her and said, “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Claire couldn’t help the little smile on her face. “Are you kidding me?” She stood up. “You were doing just fine without me until I came along and got you into all sorts of trouble.” She took out the little pendant that was still sitting in her pocket. “I have something of yours.”

Immediately she felt she had done something wrong. Sherry’s face turned into a grimace and turned away from her. She said with slight anger, “I don’t want it.”

Claire kneeled again and said, “Really? Why not? It’s so pretty!”

She flipped it over, only half-paying attention to it as she listened to Sherry. “I…It’s from my mom. For my birthday. Last year.” After some struggling, she continued, “All I wanted…was for her to be home more.”

Claire…Claire didn’t know how to respond. She still tried though. “I know it seems like your mom doesn’t care but-”

She was interrupted by a loud grunt of pain from Sherry that even prompted the agent to come over from his wall. He helped her sit up and said, “Hang in there, Sherry.”

The sudden robotic voice startled all three of them. “Now arriving at NEST.” She hadn’t even noticed the light filtering through the windows. She got up again and the agent unceremoniously picked up Sherry again. While the three of them filtered out of the cable car, she kept squirming and the agent murmured again, “I’ve got you. It’s ok.”

Once they were out of the cable car, the doors closed and it ascended back towards the surface. Claire didn’t look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> birkin fights become pretty easy when there are two people fighting him as I've found out.   
> on a second note, school has started again for me (years are weird) and i am in not finished with the next chapter whatsoever yet. I will try to still publish it on saturday like i normally do but it is very possible that i will have to switch to weekly releases instead. really sorry about that. you can still get regular content on my [tumblr](https://solulater.tumblr.com/) though.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here we have chapter 9 a day late whoopsies. the tone of this chapter is all over the place. the first half was written a month ago when i was drafting this story and the other half was done today at 7am (it is currently 9am here for reference). enjoy lmao.

NEST. It had felt like it had been a lifetime since Leon felt he’d been here himself. It had been almost 20 years since he had walked into this place for the G virus sample.

He held Sherry in his arms while Claire led them. She made a beeline for the huge door enclosing NEST. As they approached, the three heavy doors started opening while the now familiar robotic voice said, “For your safety, stand clear until the doors are open.”

Both of them stood back and waited before the third door caught and remained at about half height. Both of them slipped through. The cold, clinical reception room didn’t betray any harm to the facility and if there wasn’t a faulty door right behind him, Leon wouldn’t have assumed that there had even been an outbreak in here.

Claire was looking through some of the doors, undoubtedly for someplace to put Sherry. In one, she waved back at him, prompting him to jog over with Sherry.

The bed right in front of the door was covered with blood stains but at this point, that didn’t really matter, did it? He set her down and kneeled beside her. She was delirious and Leon didn’t even know if she could see him. He muttered, “We – we have to go, Sherry.” He reached over to her wristband and started pulling it off, no matter how weird it felt. “We’ll be back soon, alright? I’ll be back.”

As he got up, he could hear Claire muttering to herself and he knew what she must be talking about. She looked up at him. “There’s an ‘antiviral agent’. That’s gotta be it! We just…gotta find it.”

Leon just sighed. “No surprises there.” And he ruffled Sherry’s hair again for no reason other than for a feeble attempt at normalcy, they got back outside. He offered Claire the wristband with a shit excuse but he really didn’t want to wear it. Thankfully, she took it without asking too many questions.

The main door that would have led them to the main shaft was still blocked off to a higher security level. Instead the two of them moved to the other room, leading to a long, dankly lit corridor.

Following it, with their current security setting, they could enter the lunchroom. It wasn’t that impressive but it still was notable in its own right. Claire found some needles for her Spark Shot, which was a feat in and of itself given how rare they were. She also found something else.

“That zombie is eating ass!” she exclaimed. He lined a shot at the female zombie on top ( _ oh god _ ) and said “Focus. Anyway, didn’t you already make this joke at the police station?”

By that point he had already entered the vents above the kitchen while Claire was still on the ladder. As he helped pull her up, she said, “Yes, but you weren’t there.”

“I don’t know what to think of that,” he muttered as they jumped down into the kitchen. He collected a knife from the table and holding it in his hand he walked out of the room. In his peripheral vision he caught a glimpse of something decked in black.

Through instinct, he immediately slashed out, cutting a thin line into the zombie’s vest. He threw it into the air and caught it again, slamming it to the hilt in the thing’s head, killing it. Opting not to pull it back out, he walked to the other side of the room and waited for Claire to catch up.

Again, she didn’t ask questions and instead opened up the door with her new wristband. Inside the faint glow of the blue chip on a dead room drew Claire, who walked up to it and exchanged the visitor chip for general staff security clearance. Leon pulled open one of the lockers and found something for her Spark Shot. “Here’s something for ya.”

Claire took it with a “Ooh, gimme,” and as she outfitted the gun with its new attachment, they got back to the main room. With their new security clearance

He spared a quick look at Sherry and didn’t acknowledge a little pang in his heart while Claire opened up the door to the main shaft (and he smacked his hand over her mouth before she could say anything). Glimpsing a dead soldier on the ground, Claire put the wristband into a small spire, opening up the walkway to the central elevator.

Leon picked up the small recorder on the dead body and played it for the both of them. All it did was confirm the antiviral agent was in the West Area.

Claire muttered, “Huh, the West Area?” She looked up and immediately followed it up with “Hey look, that’s the West Area!” pointing to it. She sprinted the rest of the way, leaving Leon behind.

“It’s never this easy,” he muttered. True to form, she said, “Damn it. We don’t have high enough clearance.”

He pointed to the East Area instead. “Couldn’t hurt to check, right?”

Claire just said, “Yeah, yeah, whatever.” She put the wristband on the spire for the East Area instead and the walkway opened up.

As they walked across, she said, “Okay but what are the odds of us finding a senior staff level chip here?”

Instead of responding, he led her through the lobby into the presentation room, where the giant, dead corpse of a senior researcher lay smashed against the glass held up by the tendrils of ivy with the chip they needed in his outstretched hand. Claire just said, “Alright, I’m never betting against you.”

“Hah, I wish you wouldn’t. Anyway, come on, we need to get in the greenhouse.” He led the both of them into the other door in the room, which caught on some vines before fully opening. Plant life covered the interior and as they creeped through, Claire pointed up at the ceiling at some kind of body and whispered, “Now what? Aren’t zombies enough?”

He whispered back, “You’ll see soon enough,” and sure enough, an Ivy dropped from the ceiling. As they both backed up from the thing, Leon bit out a one-liner. “You ever played Pokémon?”

Claire just looked at him confusedly and asked, “What the hell is Pokémon?”

Leon gave her a confused look of his own. “No Pokémon? Huh, I could’ve sworn…” He cut off as the Ivy lunged for him before he kicked it back. “Whatever. Just use a flame round.”

She shot it, probably just having waited for an excuse to use the gun. As they ran past the trailing vines of the plant zombie, she said, “So you  _ are _ from the future?”

He had already busied himself at the dispersal unit and gotten out the cartridge that would determine all their actions here in the East Area for the upgrade chip. He saw Claire looking at it and shrugged. “We need to get the herbicide in this to get the chip.”

Claire said, “That makes sense.” She pointed towards the screen and the keypad beneath it. “How do we get the passwords to this?”

Leon creased his eyebrows. He couldn’t remember where he got one of them but he knew one of them was in the greenhouse. “Wait here, I’ll go get one of them.”

“Not like I can stop you at this point, right?” and Leon barely even heard that comment because he was already out the door.

~

He headed down and passed the ‘Drug Testing Lab’. If memory served him correct, that room would give them the herbicide. They didn’t have the passcode for it though. Instead, he turned right, for the ladder that would get them to the basement level.

An Ivy waited for him at the end and he threw his other knife into it, stumbling it. He took aim with his Sentinel and popped the small, yellow pustules on its body in quick succession. When he’d shot them all, the Ivy fell down and withered, its tendrils in the air. Did that mean it’d get up again? Hell if he knew.

He looked at the code inscribed on the cover and tried committing it to memory. F-like thing, 2 lines, 2 L-bars, and the F again. Hopefully that would be enough to remember it. Suddenly, he was pulled back by something wrapping around him. It was the Ivy again and it was opening its mouth and holy shit, was it going to bite his face off?

Before he could pull out something, anything to stop it, a knife appeared in its head. In the chaos, he pushed the zombie to the ground, coincidentally into the same spot as the first Ivy he’d stopped. Backing up, he saw Claire putting a flame round into both Ivies, finally killing them both for good.

He started, “Claire, I-” but was cut off. “Don’t pull that shit.”

He waved his hand in the air. “Yeah, yeah…” He smiled at her, though. “Thanks.”

Claire gave him a tight smile of her own. “Now I don’t feel like I owe you anymore.”

He just laughed. “You know you love me.”

For once, their roles were switched, with Leon actually being sort of cheerier and Claire being broody. They could deal with it later though. They had to open up the basement. He spared a glance at the dead researcher and followed her back to the greenhouse control room.

He input the code, all while muttering, “F…2…L…F,” and the huge screen above it played a trill, informing them the ladder was now open to access.

This time they actually went back out together and they just ignored everything because according to Claire, “those things couldn’t possibly climb ladders”. He jumped down first and she used the ladder to climb into the underground room.

***

The small basement room didn’t look much more than a maintenance area. There wasn’t even a label for the room on the map Claire found.

When they walked out, the hallway and small lounge room was completely dark and shadowed. It cut a direct contrast to the bright lighting of the main shaft and lounges, similar to the cafeteria compared to the bright reception of the North Area.

There was another room right next to him but it couldn’t open and she would deny that she ever accidentally slammed into the door.

Instead, the agent led them into the other lounge area, where 3 zombies were on the ground. “They’re playing possum, aren’t they?” she asked rhetorically.

Instead of answering, the agent started shooting and made quick work of the three zombies in question. As he committed minor manslaughter, she rooted around the room, looking through magazines, staring at the ‘MURF’ on the wall and perusing the vending machine.

She picked up an old trophy from the table and looked at it questioningly. She pointed at the DNA helix questioningly. “Yo, is this thing important?”

The man shrugged. “Most things are.”

She picked it up and turned it upside down. “Hey, look at this. It’s another code.”

“You gonna bring the trophy with us?” the agent pointed questioningly at the trophy tucked under Claire’s arm.

As a response, she stuck out her tongue at him. “You want to lead the way again?”

The agent shook his head but did indeed take point again when suddenly, something big and heavy dropped from the ceiling. The agent threw her back and, in the fray, she fell to the floor, the trophy skidding off backwards. Shaking off the ringing in her ears, she unslung the grenade launcher again and brought it up.

Her eyes cleared and in front of her, she could see the agent grappling with one of the Lickers. Both of his hands were on the thing’s face, pushing it off him. He bit out, “Flash-bang,” and Claire got the memo.

She pulled one of the flash grenades off her belt and pulled the pin, taking care to throw it behind the two of them. She and the agent both looked away and she covered her ears. As if on cue, the thing rang and flashed. The Licker took the brunt of it like she hoped, and as it thrashed, the agent finally pushed it off and for good measure, whipped a knife out of his sheath and stuck it in the oversized brain of the Licker.

As it sat flailing on the ground (now with a knife implanted in its skull), Claire loaded a flame round into her launcher. She’d show these things not to mess with them. As she readied up a shot, another Licker suddenly dropped from the ceiling. She pressed the trigger and both Lickers were immediately set ablaze. She loaded another round and fired it too, directly at the second Licker this time – two Lickers meant double the ammunition…right?

She shrugged off the agent’s attempts to move her and she watched in cold, hard fascination as both Lickers burnt to death, the scorch marks burning into their skin as meat slagged off. The whimpers and screams of the fuckers would surely haunt her, but not today.

Finally, she snapped out of it and turned to the agent, who was holding out the trophy like a peace offering. He weakly said, “Guess we’re even now.”

She pulled him into a hug, not caring about his stupid squeak of surprise nor the trophy digging into her shoulder blades. After a while, he settled and hugged back. In that moment, she almost forgot everything that was going down around them and could have stayed like that forever.

Then, Sherry’s smile appeared in her mind’s eye and Claire realised herself. They still had to get the cure and they had to hurry. She carefully extricated herself and simply whispered “Thank you.”

She took the trophy from his outstretched hands and gathered herself before saying firmly, “Ok, let’s go.”

“Alright, chief.”

~

The door at the end was the only way they could go, the low-temp testing lab being closed off the same way the server room was. It opened up to a small room which itself led to a stair lobby where thankfully, only zombies resided. The agent popped off a shot to each of them and pretty soon they were back at the B1 level.

Upstairs, they entered a small, dismal room packed to the teeth with storage supplies. This time, she shot a female zombie that groaned at her before they could get cornered. In the room, a small note caught her eye. She picked it up and read through it. It sounded like the mad ravings of a lunatic but with some surprisingly sound advice regarding what she assumed the plant zombies. ‘Burn them until their whole body’s black as ash.’ She’d already figured that out though, courtesy to the agent.

Speaking of the man, eside her, the agent looked at the wall. He was holding a giant boombox-like object in his hands. She noticed the MURF on the top.  _ Huh… _

“If I’m correct, that door goes back to the lobby again,” and he made his way over to unlock the door and prove his point. “But, we  _ can _ go and start the power back up downstairs using this thing.”

“Let’s just do it now and get it over with. I have a feeling that the freezing lab is going to be important,” she sighed.

“Well, it is. After we get the herbicide, we have to freeze it.” At her confused face, the agent asked, “Did you not see the note in the testing lab?”

“I didn’t go into the testing lab. I was too busy saving your ass, wasn’t I?” she reminded him.

He swatted at her and instead said, “Whatever. Point is, there was a note inside that said how to make the herbicide for easy dispersal. Get it, freeze it, and then disperse it. Easy.”

She filed that information away. By that point, they had arrived back at the lounge. The agent turned on the piece of equipment, which then let out a shrill, high trill. He moved the top switch to MURF and fiddled with the two knobs until he felt satisfied with it and placed it into the wall socket. Suddenly all the lights turned back on blindingly and she heard a soft hiss from the two doors to signal they had opened.

She started to move before she noticed the agent still staring at the power box. He seemed to be deliberating on something.

“What, man?” she asked.

He turned to look at her and once again, his eyes were unreadable. “There’s another one of these back in the North Area. I could probably go back and use it there.”

Claire stayed stunned. She jabbed a finger into his chest but awkwardly put it back down when the agent tensed. “No! Don’t you get it? We have to stick together!”

The agent raised his hand. “Look, Claire. No offense but I operate alone. I’ll be fine.”

“Hell you will be! Where would you be now if I hadn’t stabbed the plant zombie? Or the Licker, did you forget that?”

“That was different. You’ve seen the North Area. You know there’s nothing more dangerous there than just zombies. We left Sherry there, it’ll be fine.”

Claire’s lips moved but she couldn’t make a sound. “…Then I’ll come with you?”

The agent laughed darkly. “You don’t have to.”

Claire hung her head for a second and then raised it again. She held eye contact this time through. “There’s something else isn’t there? You have a whole ulterior motive for going back, don’t you?”

He kept his eyes level with her. “That’s none of your business.”

She threw up her hands. “Fine. What am I supposed to do while you run around back there, then?”

He pointed to one of the couches. “Why not just…stay here?”

Claire rolled her eyes. Completely sarcastic (a concept the agent understood well enough), she said, “Sure. I’ll just make myself at home. Should I get you a drink from the vending machine as well?”

“Har har. Now give me your wristband.”

“What, no! You’re just trying to keep me here aren’t you?”

He shook his hands. “I just need a wristband to go back there?” At a glance from her, he said, “Fine. Whatever, I won’t take your wristband. Happy now?”

“ _ Ecstatic _ .”

“How else am I going to get back, then?”

Claire thought for a second and then remembered. She moved to one of the zombie corpses on the ground and fiddled with its arm for a second. She wiped off the blood as best she could and held up the new, general staff level wristband for the agent to take. “Here, asshat. Now we match.”

The agent took it with a small “Thanks,” and made sure she had laid down onto one of the couches before leaving. She watched him until he walked out to the stair lobby and sprung back up, unholstering her SLS60 at the same time.

She had some work to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. do you know how disappointed i was when i found out pokemon was released in the US the DAY AFTER claire and leon's visit to RC? I am not even joking its just such a coincidence and leon couldnt even get his poor one-liner out pour one out for him.  
> 2\. i struggled with the licker scene so much. let's just say leon will not be going deaf ey let's run with that.  
> see y'all next time <3


	10. Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am BACK from writer's block hell with an incredibly short self-indulgent completely bullshit chapter enjoy this tomfoolery

Sherry could only feel pain. She could only… _ feel _ the thing inside her.

She couldn’t concentrate on anything and she was scared that if she stopped actively thinking about the infection, it would take over. She didn’t want to become like her dad.

She could hear the outside world but she had scrunched up her eyes. She couldn’t focus on anything else. She had to keep fighting the infection.

Anyway, she hadn’t heard anything for quite some time. She remembered almost blacking out from the pain on the cable car and feeling her limp body being carried. She was put on this bed and the agent had taken her…taken her wristband. That’s right. He and Claire had talked about getting a vaccine for her and apart from some footsteps she heard, everything was silent.

It had been for maybe half an hour? Or less than that? Sherry didn’t know.

It was all very quiet. Suddenly, she heard quiet footsteps and she immediately perked up before settling down with a pained expression. The effort was wasted – the person wasn’t coming for her. They died back down and Sherry’s heart stumbled a bit.

She could do this, she just had to wait for Mr. Agent and Claire to come back. She had gotten used to being alone anyway, hadn’t she?  _ But not in this suffocating silence _ , her mind ventured.

The footsteps started back up again and Sherry tried to ignore them. Surprisingly, they started coming right for her. Her ears perked up despite herself. They stopped right before her and it was silent again.

A small metallic sound could be heard and then a hand was resting on hers. She remained as still as she could be. Who was that? She had to open her eyes to see, but that hurt.

Everything remained still for a second. No one present spoke a word. Finally, the person holding her hand talked, sounding weary and tired. “Hey Sherry.”

She couldn’t place the voice immediately. It went silent again for a few moments and then started up again. “I’m sorry.”

Then, she realised. It was Mr. Agent! But…why was he here? What was he apologising for? She almost forced it out and her throat felt horrible but she had to say it. It was barely more than a whisper but it was enough to bring her point across. “F-For what?”

There was a short silence once again. Then, “For…everything.”

An uneasy silence rang between the two of them. How was Mr. Agent at fault? It was…it was  _ her _ fault, wasn’t it? For leaving the house?

Just when she was about to muster her strength to ask again, he finally continued. “For getting you into this mess. For the G-virus. For-”, he cut himself off, as if he was talking about something forbidden. He started up again, and there was something in his voice. “Just – for everything. I’m so sorry Sherry.”

She coughed out, “It’s not…your fault.”

She forced her eyes open to look at him. She saw his blue eyes harden, but for a moment she saw something else in them. Something she thought she would see if she could see her eyes. She coughed out, “I – I left my house. I got…infected. It’s my fault.”

The agent’s hands squeezed hers and it was oddly comforting. His voice was hard. “Sherry, it’s never your fault. If anything, it’s mine. I should have been there. I –” His brows furrowed, and Sherry could see a fire growing in his eyes. “I should have just – hell, he was right there! I could have shot him! This wouldn’t have happened if I just...” He cut himself off and let out a frustrated sound, before burying his head in his hands. 

At that exact moment, almost as a coincidence, her body wracked with pain, and she curled up. Her eyes scrunched shut and she cried out. She could hear the clack of metal in the background. Despite it being a whisper, she could still hear Mr. Agent’s words. “I  _ will _ get you that vaccine, Sherry. Don’t worry.”

_ Was he going to leave now?  _ The hand holding on to her wrist let go and Sherry’s heart cried out. This time she whispered, “Pl-Please don’t go.”

Mr. Agent’s footsteps stopped in place. She guiltily opened her eyes again, and she could see him frozen in place, half facing the open door and half facing her. She coughed again and said, “What’s your…name, Mr. Agent?”

He completely turned around to look at her, and his face had morphed from the angry one a moment earlier, to a baffled one. She thought,  _ good. As long as he isn’t angry, I’ll be happy _ . After another moment of silence, he said, “Why?”

“So I can – thank you when I get better.”

The agent muttered something to himself and his eyebrows scrunched up. After a moment and Sherry felt like all hope was lost, he walked back to her. He kneeled again to hold her hand in his, completely silent. He sighed finally, followed by a small, short whisper. She strained her ears to hear it. “Leon.”

She looked at him in the eyes and whispered back to him. “That’s a nice name, Agent Leon.”

“I – Thanks, Sherry.” He abruptly got up and said, “Sit tight. We’ll go get you that vaccine.”

And just like that he was back out the door. Sherry held onto the names like a lifeline.  _ Claire and Leon. _

***

_ Oh god, what the fuck have I done.  _ Leon buried his head in its hands out of sight from the doorway. Why? Why had he done that?

“Shit’s wack,” he muttered to himself.

You know what, if he’d done that, then he was completely and utterly justified in doing something else he’d been thinking about doing. He headed to the main doors this time and waited patiently for them to open up. He winced at the loud female voice; hopefully no one was nearby to witness this horrible lapse in judgement on his part.

He stepped out of the lab and headed up the walkway to the cable car sitting innocently on the rail, the occupant inside not so much.

He hadn’t seen Ada at all since Lanshiang. Who knew where the woman had disappeared to? Despite everything Chris had told him about her work with Neo Umbrella, he still doubted it to this very day. Sure, she was a manipulative mercenary who was usually only in it for herself, but Neo Umbrella? Wasn’t her style. He knew that much about her.

He had reached the cable car door, steeling himself before he entered it with his new wristband. The spy was right where he remembered she’d be. There was a slight second of delay between him entering and her pulling out her sidearm. “You know I’d figured you’d have noticed me earlier,” was the first thing out of his mouth.

This Ada…god it had been a long time. She was still the same mercenary he remembered from 4 years ago, but like him, she was still inexperienced. At least when it came to B.O.W.s.

The handgun was still in his face and Ada responded, “Who are you?”

He laughed mirthlessly. “You’re really asking me that?”

The handgun lowered an inch. “My bad. Who are you working for?”

Of course that’d be the second question. He already had a response ready. “The government. But you knew that already, didn’t you?  _ Agent Wong _ ?”

He leaned on the open doorway facing her, both to look cool and to leave if she ever took a shot at him. She looked as if she was considering it. She hadn’t perfected her poker face yet at least. “Look, neither of us trusts the other. I just have some questions.”

“Then talk.”

“Yeesh, I’d’ve figured you’d be nicer to me.”

“You got one thing right. I  _ don’t  _ trust you, whoever sent you. So why don’t you  _ start talking _ ?”

“Fine, fine, put that gun down.”

She raised her eyebrows in a gesture that was timeless on her and he raised his hands. “Was that really too much to ask? Fine.”

“Tell me about Simmons.” He had no clue why that would be the first question he’d have for this woman but hey, it might be one she could probably answer.

“Simmons? Why him?” Her face gave nothing away. He might have to retract his earlier statement about her poker face.

“Just a question. Why? Is there something you’d rather hide?” Damn it, he should not be antagonizing the woman with a gun to his face.

“You sure you want me to tell you about him? It might uncover some little secrets about your government you wouldn’t like to hear.” He could practically hear the smirk in her voice.

He muttered contemptuously, “Trust me, I know all about them.”

“And yet…you still work for them?” He narrowed her eyes at her. He’d seen this trick one too many times.

“Yeah, that’s not gonna work on me. Now, you can either answer my question or I can get out of here.”

She put her handgun down. “Hardly seems fair you know my name while I don’t know yours.” Oh, she really was laying it on thick now, wasn’t she?

He shrugged his hands. “Couldn’t care less.” He put his hand in his pocket and his palm felt the cold feel of a compact powder he’d been carrying for, what was it, 4 years? He hated himself for it but it was like a routine. Mission? He brought it along no matter how unlikely it was to see her there.

Well, he’d seen her again. He could tell that to Helena to shut her up. Now…now it was time to let go. He pulled it out and contemplated it in his hands before tossing it to her.

She caught it and turned it around in her hand. Her response was immediate. “Sorry, I don’t need much help with my makeup.”

“You’ll figure it out. Now, try not to break Leon’s heart too much for me.”

“Still haven’t told me your name.”

He just smirked at her. For once he had more information than her. Vindication. “You’ll figure it out. Bye, Ada. See you around.”

He left the cable car and felt as if a weight had been lifted from his chest. He had much more important things to care about than a compact powder, he could see that much now. Time to get that vaccine for Sherry.

~

Claire was right there in the main shaft facing the elevator waiting for him. “I thought I told you to stay in the lobby.”

“Got bored. Here’s the senior level chip. Why’d it take you so long to just get a,” she scrutinised his appearance, “hip pouch? What were you even doing?”

He shook his head but with no real anger. “I’m not telling you that, you don’t get to hear it. God, I should have realised you’d pull that stunt. Fine. West Area, here we come.”

She turned on the walkway to the West Area and she muttered, “Soon, Sherry. Soon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that was over qUick wasn't it. i don't know either. the next three chapters are like consecutive boss fights no lie so like let's let them talk. i fully acknowledge that in canon this would probably not happen but like i thought both these conversations would be fun to write shut up  
> while aeon is not my favourite ship (CHREON) i do have some opinions on them. ask me stuff on [tumblr](https://solulater.tumblr.com/) why don't ya  
> new chapter will be out....soon i promise. at least give me a week it should be coming.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaAAAH the stage 3 birkin fight is HERE !! go ham y'all

Claire was waiting in the main shaft for the agent to get back. Yeah, he told her to wait it out until he came back, but that wasn’t how Claire rolled.

She had done the annoying herbicide puzzle, gotten it, frozen it, made a great one-liner that she knew the agent would have approved of, used it in the greenhouse, made another one-liner, and got the senior level security chip. In that order.

Both of them walked into the West Area with trepidation. Unlike the other reception areas, this one was dark and a lot more surgical. She could tell this was the final stand. The final area. Damn her brain.

She grabbed a VHS off of a dead soldier and also a grenade as a second thought. The narrow corridor they were in opened up to a huge room, an operating room maybe? A small cavity she recognized as a slot for the signal modulator was on the wall and the agent was one step ahead of her, already putting the thing in the wall.

After a second, the room lit up. She could see clearer now the interior of the room and her first thought was correct. There was an operating table and the opposite side of the room through some glass. This side had a computer and small TV linked to a VHS player,  _ lucky _ .

She slotted the VHS tape into the player and pressed ‘play’. She and the agent watched as some random soldiers – or were they agents too? – cornered “Dr. Birkin’, Sherry’s father, ultimately killing him.

“If he’s dead…never mind. Who are these soldiers?” Now, she remembered the question she’d had for the agent all the way back in the sewers when they saw the first tape.

“Those? I think they’re U.S.S. soldiers.” At her confused look, he elaborated, “Umbrella Secret Service. Never was sure though, we never could figure that out.”

So Umbrella had a secret service? Oh god, they were a lot more powerful than she had assumed. Then again, they did make the virus. Makes sense they would need the protection. “‘Could’ isn’t present tense, idiot. Stop spilling your big future secrets.”

The agent buried his face in his hands.

She led the way through the operating room and through the door at the end as the agent was clearly out of commission for now – “A literal child” – and they passed the room with a coat rack with lab coats hung on it. She disregarded them; they didn’t have the time for that. They walked into another room that bombarded the two of them with sprinkler water. She stumbled through, wiping off her eyes, out of the spray and into some heaters. Catching on, she started to wash off her face a little bit. The agent had pulled out his sidearm.

They walked through the final door and it opened up into a vast room, at least under them. She looked over the narrow walkway but it was pitch black enough that she couldn’t see anything down there. “This isn’t suspicious at all,” she muttered.

“Welcome to my life,” the agent replied sarcastically. They made their way across the walkway and into the room at the end.

The front of it looked as if there were large heating coils implanted in the wall, giving off an ethereal red light. That didn’t help the three test tubes at the back, each full of some horrendous experiments which could only have aided in the research into Birkin’s mutation. One had an arm, one a gruesome face with two bulbous eyes and the last something she really didn’t know.

As they walked closer, the room wasn’t as dingy as she’d first thought it’d be. Sure, there were blood stains on the ground where she could remember Birkin being killed but those…those were common in the apocalypse.

Right there, there had to be the thing she had run through this damn lab for. The vaccine. It should be right inside the huge covered container. Now, how was she going to open this? “Hey, Mr. Agent! You know how to open this thing?”

The man, who was picking up some gunpowder, looked up at that. “Open it? I…I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

She smacked the container in a fit of rage, before looking down. There was a small little depression in the metal. There was a carving of two snakes intertwined. Something tickled at her memory. Where had she seen this symbol before?

_ C’mon think! We have to get back to Sherry! _

And then it struck her. Sherry’s pendant! She fished it out of one of her hip pouches and stared at the design on top. Yep, it was the twin snakes. She put it in the depression and the machine accepted it. The cover opened up and she could see a couple of vials sitting inside. She picked up one of the larger ones sitting on the top and examined it. It was labelled DEVIL, what they called the antiviral agent.

Oh thank god. The agent piped up, “Can we get the pendant back out?”

Claire tried to pick the pendant out but the depression had grown too deep. “Fuck. Nope, it’s stuck.”

“Was hoping to avoid this whole mess, god damn it.” He sighed at something she wasn’t privy to. “Fine. Let’s get back to Sherry.”

She handed him the vaccine before they left the testing lab and at his confused look, she parroted his lie at the cable car. “I’m carrying the heavy artillery. You can hold onto this.”

The agent seemed to understand what she wasn’t telling him and nodded at her. Together, they walked out into the bioreactors room once again.

The walk felt so much longer than before; both of them instinctively knew something big was about to go down. Maybe the agent even more so than her. He was acting jittery. If this man was, what was about to go down?

They had just reached the end of the hallway when a resounding crash filled the room. They turned around to see a giant hole in the roof and suddenly Birkin jumped through, landing in front of them on the walkway. Fuck his timing.

~

Both she and the agent turned their weapons on the G at the same time. She exclaimed, “Your ass again?”

Before any of them could do anything, the lab doors opened behind them and a female voice rang out. “William!”

The woman ran out in front of them and Claire could see it was Annette Birkin.  _ This monster’s wife and one of its creators _ , her mind reminded her. She brought out what looked like a flare gun and yelled out, “This ends now!”

She shot what was probably an acid round into the beast, which completely stunned it and sent it writhing and crashing to the ground. The monster let out a cry of pure agony before keeling over and going limp.

She approached it with her gun up while Annette slowly lowered the launcher while the agent hung back, clearly antsy. She looked at the G closely, then back up at the woman and said the first thing that was on her mind, “You shot your own husband?”

Annette looked at her, probably the most clear-minded she had been in the short time she’d talked to the lady. “I…wish I had.”

At Claire’s confused look, she elaborated. She told them of how she had been there when her husband had injected the G-virus into his bloodstream and how she had even picked up his handgun and trained it on him. “I should’ve killed him while I had the chance. I don’t know why, I just…I just couldn’t do it.”

“He was your husband.” Claire knew that despite all of this, if she had been in Annette’s place, she wouldn’t be able to put a bullet in her partner’s head.

Annette rubbed her arm. “Honestly, we were more married to our work than each other.”

Claire shook her head. “But what about Sherry? How could you just leave her all alone – and while Raccoon City burned to hell?”

Annette waved her hand in her face. “I couldn’t let my daughter grow up in a world with the G-virus in it-”

And she wasn’t going to deal with the sheer hypocrisy of Annette being one of the creators of the G-virus. Clenching her fist, she stared dead into her eyes, anger rising in her voice. “That’s no excuse to leave her-”

This time she was cut off by the agent. In her shouting match with Annette, both of them hadn’t noticed William slowly waking up from his short nap. The agent yelled out, “Get back!” and pushed Claire behind him.

Before he could get to Annette as well, Birkin had already grabbed her in a grip. Claire’s mind went blank as it replayed when he had done the same thing to her. Claws were surrounding her and closing in around her and she couldn’t  _ breathe- _

The air was punctuated by a spray of gunfire as the agent brought the SMG straight into the giant, bulging eye on Birkin’s arm. The eye burst and it dropped her in shock. Claire broke out of the episode and ran for Annette, trying to pull her out of harm’s way.

The woman pushed her away and instead reloaded her launcher, saying, “I got this!”

The agent had backed off as well as Birkin stood in all his glory. 2 more arms sprang from his back and the only thought in Claire’s head was  _ oh great, more fucking arms _ .

Annette stumbled up and aimed her launcher at Birkin. She whispered, “I’m sorry, William.” She shot and Birkin keeled over again but Claire knew it wouldn’t be for long this time. She made for the platform button she had noticed earlier and pressed it. She vaulted onto the lowering platform, her boots rattling the metal below her, and said, “No.  _ I _ got this.”

The agent looked at Annette before mentally making a decision. He handed her the vial of the antivirus and said, “Go! Take care of Sherry.”

Annette stared at the bottle in shock before taking it and nodding at him. He gracefully jumped over the ledge and landed on the platform beside her. Annette looked back at Claire and she almost couldn’t hear her. “You don’t know what you’re up against.”

She unholstered her SLS60 and loaded her high-powered rounds into it, looking directly at the monster she was facing. It was now starting to get up. “I think I have a pretty damn good idea.”

Annette looked over the edge and now yelled out, “Whatever you do, don’t stop until it’s finished.”

She looked at her one final time and held eye contact as she yelled, “Trust me.” She put her attention back onto William who was now getting up. The agent beside her was reloading his SMG.

“This ends now.”

~

She and the agent understood each other enough at this point that they immediately ran in opposite directions. The G might’ve been strong but it was also fucking stupid. She scooped up some handgun ammo from the ground and wondered why the hell this place had ammo scattered around. Then she shut off that train of thought because now was  _ not  _ the time.

The G now had 4 damn arms and she kept them out of her mind as she focused on the giant eyeballs on its body. If they could pop them all, then they had a shot here. The agent obviously had the same thought as he aimed right for the eye on its shoulder.

The monster stared right at him and started a charge. The man bid his time, much to Claire’s frustration, and as soon as the beast jumped to crush him, he ran and baseball-slid right under it. He immediately pulled out…a different gun…and shot the eye on the creature’s back once, popping it.

That broke her out of her stupor and she cursed for staring star-struck at the chaos. She unslung the grenade launcher and waited for the monster to stumble around to them before striking it directly in its centre of mass.

The acid stunned the monster enough that the agent could barrage the shoulder’s eye with the SMG until it finally popped.

They had only one other eye on the body and the agent really was making quick work of the bastard. He had way too much experience. That was a good thing. “Where the hell did that gun come from?”

“The Desert Eagle? I’ve always had it on me. I just never used it.” She shrugged at his apologetic tone. The agent could take his secrets and shove them where the sun didn’t shine. On another note, the acid rounds were pretty effective on this thing.

The G looked enraged, probably the only emotion it had left. It suddenly ripped off a piece of the wall and lifted it over its head in triumph. She shot it with another acid round and it stumbled over itself, dropping the wall on itself like a baby.

The agent nodded his approval and ran around the monster before it noticed him to shoot its leg-eye. After 5 handgun bullets, it popped and the monster took a knee.

This was different from what it did on the crane platform and it leaned backwards instead of forwards this time, and its chest  _ opened _ . A mass of eyeballs emerged from the bones protecting them and Claire knew what to do.

She slung the grenade launcher and took out the Spark Shot this time. She had so many needles for it and now she would use them. She shocked him once, and then twice. The agent stayed behind to admire her handiwork.

Suddenly, the eyeballs were absorbed back into the body and the G sprang back to its feet. It swiped out, and she leapt back instinctually, almost getting her stomach sliced open. That would haunt her now, wouldn’t it?

She ran to the back of the giant arena and picked up a flash grenade sitting on the table. How it got there, she wouldn’t know but hell, it would be useful. The agent – wait, where was he? She brought up the grenade launcher again and loaded another acid round into the hulking behemoth, stunning it in its tracks.

Another burst of machine gun fire from the side and another roar of pain from the beast. One of the three eyes down. Two to go. First, she had to get out of the way.

_ Won’t have a better time to use this anyway _ . With that, she pulled the pin of the flash grenade and threw it at the monster, blinding it again. Both she and the agent went for the eyeballs this time, her with the SLS 60 and him with the Desert Eagle (that he hid from her). Two satisfying pops rang out and the monster sunk to take a knee once more.

Neither of them took any chances. Claire let loose her two final flame rounds into the heaving chest eyeball mass. The agent decided to do something this time around and joined in, 5 Magnum bullets breaking apart the eyeballs.

It wasn’t enough though, and Birkin got right back up again. She yelled out in anger as she backed up. “How long are we going to keep doing this?”

The agent had run up to join her and muttered, “Hell if I know.”

This time, the G took one look at them and turned around, seemingly uninterested. Claire fired an acid round into its back, waiting for the other shoe to drop. While that stunned it, it didn’t stop. It clung to a wall and pulled and  _ oh shit _ , the other shoe had dropped.

Both she and the agent pelted its back with handgun bullets but it shook them all off, finally wrenching the pillar from the wall. The agent yelled out in shock but the words were lost on Claire, who ran behind one of the helpful wall divisions.

She could see the agent hiding behind the one opposite her and the gigantic crash of machinery might as well have blasted out her eardrums. The rubble from the crash fell in front of her, riddling the ground in broken metal.

It didn’t have its obvious weak spots anymore. Instead, its whole body was glowing an unnatural red. Its chest cavity wasn’t as covered as before. Hopefully that meant they could finish this off soon.

She blasted off 3 more high-powered rounds at the beast as it hunkered over at the agent this time, and while it yelled out in pain, it still made a grab for the man. He had anticipated the swipe though, and ducked under it. He rolled out of the way of the follow-up smash and he pulled out his final ace. He brought out a knife he had on him and slammed it into the already heaving chest cavity.

That seemed to be the final straw for the monster and it staggered away from the agent. The eyes, now fully exposed once again, looked as if they were crying a viscous yellow pus, all of them popping simultaneously. It wailed again and keeled over, finally landing with a thump on the metal and not moving.

Breathing heavily, she asked, “Is it…is it dead?”

The agent, who she noted, was also breathing heavily, answered. “We’ll see. Let’s get out of here.”

She holstered the SLS and said, “Seconded.”

***

They loaded onto a small lift and left the bioreactors room. They had to get back to Sherry. Had Annette really gone through with it? He didn’t know the woman more than ‘she shot me once’ but he hoped she had it in her to at least save Sherry before going to get the G virus from past-his hands.

They travelled in complete silence all the way back to the North Area, past dead U.S.S. agents, the central elevator and back into the reception area. Claire bashed through the door and ran in, Leon close behind. Sherry was still lying on the cot, while Annette was standing, facing some monitors on the wall.

Both of them looked up at Claire’s door-smash. Sherry’s eyes, he realised, were back to normal.

Claire skidded to a stop at Sherry’s bed and kneeled down. Sherry smiled up at her and gave a knowing look towards Leon. “Hey! I knew you’d make it.”

He looked over at Annette, who had muttered, “Thank god,” to herself while reading over the wall-monitor.

He addressed his next question to her. “Is Sherry going to be alright?”

Annette looked around in surprise, almost as if she hadn’t heard the two of them enter. She tightened her expression quickly enough, though, and breathed out, “She’ll be weak for a little while but…yes, she’s free of the G-virus.”

Leon let out a sigh of relief he didn’t know he’d been holding in for a while. She’d be okay. He didn’t know what he’d do if he didn’t have Sherry in his life.

Claire stood up while Sherry sat up in interest and she put her hand on her shoulder, saying, “Did you hear that?”

Sherry nodded, a bright ball of sunshine. The poor girl had to go through all these horrors and she could still muster a smile like that…

“Don’t wanna break up this reunion, but we really should be going,” he mustered out. The self-destruct code would start at any minute now. They had to get out of the lab down to the train, if he wasn’t mistaken.

Sherry got up from the bed, stumbling a bit on her feet but mostly fine. Claire looked confused. “Why? What’s going on?”

Suddenly, the loud, robotic voice from before said, “Attention: Unauthorized removal of a [Level 4] virus detected. Facility lockdown initiated. Self-destruct sequence will begin when the lockdown is complete.”

Claire looked at Annette. “What does that mean?”

Annette looked up in shock. “It’s the self-destruct code in case the G-virus leaves the building.” As an afterthought, she added, “I have to stop it.”

Claire’s eyebrows raised but at this point, he doubted anything could faze her. “Okay, we gotta get out of here before that happens.”

“You can use the central elevator to get out of here.” Annette continued.

Leon gathered them all up and ushered them towards the door. “Alright, we get it. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

Their small ragtag group filed out of the room and headed into the main shaft. Annette was limping slightly.

At the elevator, Annette stopped them. She handed Claire the chip from her personal wristband and said, “Don’t worry about me. Get my daughter to safety.”

Claire shook her head. “No, we’re not leaving you here.”

Annette continued as if she wasn’t listening. She kneeled down and hugged Sherry, a rare display of physical affection he hadn’t thought the elder Birkins were capable of. “I’m sorry, Sherry. For…for everything. You need to get out of here, okay?”

Sherry untangled herself from her mother. “I can’t just leave you here.”

Annette shook her head this time. “No. Your life is what is important, alright? Not mine. Get out of the lab.”

She stood back and looked at Leon directly. They shared a weird but knowing look. He would take care of Sherry and he knew what she was going to do before she had done it. She asked him, “You aren’t affiliated with…with  _ her _ , right?”

He knew who she was talking about. “No. I’m just here to get Sherry out of this mess, I swear.”

She seemed to accept his answer. “Fine. Keep my daughter safe, agent.”

“Never thought I’d see the day when I’d agree with Annette Birkin.”

She nodded at him before looking back down at Sherry and whispering, “Stay safe, Sherry. I’ll always love you.” She limped off into the other direction, to the West Area and Leon knew that she would die there. She would die from injuries sustained from being thrown into the wall. She would die after shooting Ada into the darkness below. For a second, he almost called out to her, to stop her from entering the door. But it was too late. She had disappeared through the door.

He looked back at the other two beside him, both still looking at Annette from back here. He whispered, “Claire?”

She looked up and realised she held the senior chip in her hands. She shakily replaced the other chip with it and opened the central elevator to them. Her voice shook. “Come on Sherry. We – we need to go.”

Sherry still looked at the door, long closed at this point. Leon looked down at her and said, “I’m sorry, Sherry but we  _ have _ to go now.”

Sherry finally looked up and at him. After a moment of silence, she nodded and whispered, “Okay.” The three of them filed into the elevator and descended from the lab.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i could not resist leon knifing the g to death im such a sucker for his antics. um i hope the sherry/annette part was sufficiently sad enough. hmm i have not much else to say. next chapter'll take some time, i'll see you all then :-)


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY GUYS. i'm so sorry its been like ... a month? since i last uploaded. but. do not fear! cuz i am back! from writer's hell! with this chapter for you all. i feel i'm a ... slightly better writer than when i started this ordeal so let's get into it

The elevator ride couldn’t have been more than a minute in length but it felt so long to the both of them. The agent was once again sort of antsy, like he knew something she and Sherry did not. At this point, she’d let the agent keep his damn secrets.

Then again, it might’ve been about the damn self-destruct sequence going down. A timer hadn’t started yet thankfully. Hopefully, they could get out of this lab before anything initiated. The lab descended down past a gigantic overheating core and Claire could only now realise the sheer vastness of the lab.

Sherry turned to her. “Um…Claire?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you for being so nice to me. And…helping me. Both of you. I’m really glad I met you.”

While the agent still stood stoic at the doors, Claire could swear she saw the corner of his mouth turn into a little smile. He was too much of an idiot to say it out loud but it was fine. She’d say it for the both of them at least. “I’m glad I met you too, Sherry. But thank me when we get you out of this place.”

The elevator finally stopped at a control room and the three of them ran through it, the agent picking up another knife to replace the one he’d stuck in Birkin. They emerged on a small walkway, facing another large expanse of lab area. The agent stared out into it with distaste and then nodded towards the open door to the side.

Again, they wound up into a little machinery area. Now, it could only be a sprint to the finish. Annette had said there would be a way for them to escape on the bottom level. What could it have been?

They loaded onto a small lift and almost as soon as they did that, the female voice that had been yelling for the past few minutes finally said, “10 minutes until detonation.”

“God dammit, Leon,” she heard the agent curse.

She audibly gasped. “How the hell do you know Leon? And how is it his fault the self-destruct sequence started?”

The man paused and finally said, “Leon’s a little shit and did something he wasn’t supposed to.”

An Ivy zombie rose in front of her but she guided Sherry around it before it could even properly get up. She muttered, “You didn’t answer my question.”

The agent was dodging one of his own in front of her. Instead of properly answering her, the agent instead opted to just yell out, “Just run!”

The three of them ran out of that room before any of the Ivies could grab them and ended up in another room with a ladder leading down.

The three of them climbed down. Well, she and Sherry climbed like normal people. The agent insisted on jumping down. She ran for the door at the end but damn it, it was locked.

She snapped to get the agent’s attention and motioned for the door. “Stupid thing’s locked. How do we get it open?”

Sherry, the literal 12-year-old child, raised her hand confidently. “I can get it open. I can climb through that vent over there.” She pointed at the vent.

She hesitated and then nodded. They needed all the help they could get. The agent seemed to have a bigger objection to make but Sherry silenced him with a “I can open it! Don’t worry about me.” She was going to have to start taking notes.

As soon as Sherry started the little climb to get up over the other side, the vines tangling the whole facility started swaying, one dropping an Ivy into the chasm under the walkway. There would be more coming.

He asked her, “Got any flame rounds left?”

She shook her head. “Used them all on Birkin.” She pulled out her trusty SLS60 again. “Target practice?”

He smiled at her and his handgun was deftly brought out of his leg holster. “Target practice.”

2 Ivies total rose in the time it took for Sherry to open the door behind them. The two of them made quick work of them, seemingly knowing which bulb the other was aiming for. The agent’s aim was far better than hers, but she felt she was doing well on her own. Experience was the best way to learn, wasn’t it?

Suddenly the door opened behind the two of them and Sherry’s soft, excited voice bled out. “I did it!”

Claire let out a shaky breath she didn’t realise she’d been holding in and said, “Good job Sherry!” The three of them zigzagged through the room and she added, “Y’know what? We make a good team.”

Again, she spotted a tiny smile on the agent’s face. She was growing on him, she knew.

Blasting past another zombie, the three of them ran through another corridor, onto a giant walkway. She kept pace with Sherry, who looked winded from the run. She asked her, “You doing okay?”

She nodded, despite the lab falling apart around them. “Yeah, I am. C’mon!”

She put on a burst of speed and raced in front, almost matching the agent’s speed for a second. Claire whooped, that small act keeping her spirits up. “Attagirl! Think we’re almost out of here.”

The agent burst through the door at the end and she could see a giant train. Claire’s mind raced. This must’ve been what Annette had meant by a way out.

The agent took charge. “Claire, get Sherry on that train. Keep her safe. I’ll find a way to get this started.” And with that he barrelled through into the control room.

She hurried Sherry into the train and sat her down. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed some plugs laying on the ground. She’d bet anything that that was what they needed to get the train moving.

She picked them up and Sherry piped up, “Claire?”

She put on a brave smile. “The agent forgot something. I need to give it to him.” She kneeled down and with utter seriousness, she said, “Whatever happens, I need you to stay right here, okay?”

Sherry looked at her and after a moment, nodded. “I promise I won’t move.”

She smiled at the girl and got up. As she walked off, Sherry warned her. “Be careful.”

“Always.”

As she ran out the door of the train carriage, the female voice issued another warning. “8 minutes left until detonation.”

She could see the agent inside the control room, still messing around with the levers inside, trying to figure out how to get it to work. She yelled at him. “I have these. Will they help?”

His eyes widened but he quickly covered it up with a nod. She blasted through the doors and handed him the plugs. Immediately her eyes zoomed in on a whole honking  _ minigun _ sitting on a table. Who left a minigun here? Who cares, it was their loss.

The agent smirked up at her as he pulled the main lever for power. “Like it? Thought you might. You can have it. I’m still never going to figure out how you know how to use it at 19, though.”

“And you never will.”

Lights spotlighting the train turned on and the train looked ready to start. She heaved a sigh of relief. They could get out of here. And if Birkin dared show his face, she had a minigun ready and waiting for him for his ugly face.

Both of them were shocked to hear a young, male voice yell, “Claire!”

They both turned to the monitor sitting next to the lever. It was mainly static but she could see a faint face on it. It was banged up and bruised and she hadn’t seen that face in hours but she’d remember it.

She exclaimed, “Leon?” The agent vacated the monitor area, knowing that this was a private thing.

“Are you okay? Shit, how’d you get down here?”

He let out a nervous laugh. “That’s a long story. What’s more important is that the whole place is coming down.” He got up from the monitor to look at something in the distance before leaning back onto the monitor. “Listen, you need to get out. Fast!”

She looked at the train right in front of her. “I know. I think I’ve found a way out. I think…” She looked at the agent beside her, who gave her a peace sign. Christ, was it the 70s again? She continued her earlier thought. “I think we can  _ all _ get out of here. Where are you now?”

Leon frowned. Hadn’t he heard what Claire had said? He yelled out, “Claire? You still with me?” Apparently not.

At the exact same moment, static filled the screen. “Leon? You’re breaking up, I can’t hear you.” She couldn’t help the slight desperation creeping into her voice.

The static cleared just long enough for him to bite out, “Don’t worry about me. Just get out of here!”

Suddenly the agent was over the monitor and he hardly yelled out, “Just get to the train, Leon. Don’t be a hero.”

The screen cut to black. The connection must have cut out. “Damn it!” she exclaimed. She looked at the agent strangely, his last words to Leon – who she was certain he didn’t know – confusing her. What did he mean ‘don’t be a hero’?

They had to get out of here. She had to decide between Sherry and the agent and Leon and it was a hard choice. She didn’t think she could’ve made that choice herself anyway.

“Listen,” the agent drew her attention. When she nodded at him, he continued, “Leon will make it out.  _ Believe _ me, I know. We need to get this train running first and foremost. You with me?”

She grabbed the minigun sitting on the table and nodded. They’d get out and hopefully pick Leon up on the way. She had to trust the agent right now. They’d  _ all _ get out, like Leon had said all the way back in the police station, a daydream away. They  _ had to _ .

***

Leon knew the Tyrant would be coming for the him from the past. He only had a vague idea of what was coming for Claire and him now. He knew it was a form of Birkin coming, but he never knew exactly what it would look like. Claire never wanted to come forth with the details and he never pushed. He understood, he hadn’t really said a word about the Super Tyrant to her.

Both of them burst through the doors of the control room. They felt the floor descend and even though Claire wobbled a bit on her feet, they both managed to stay upright. They came to the same conclusion – they had to get to the bottom floor for the train to actually reach its tracks. Again, the female voice said, “7 minutes until detonation,” before she was drowned out by blaring alarms.

A loud roar resounded from the ceiling and Claire looked up with grim determination. He pulled out his measly Sentinel and yelled out, “Get ready!”

She brought up the minigun and didn’t even falter under the weight. Damn, she was good. “Ready as always!”

Almost as if on cue, Birkin jumped down onto the train from somewhere above them. He no longer looked even a bit humanoid like he had up till this point. He was just a pinkish blob, with eyeballs concealed in his chest. He bellowed like an animal and at that exact moment Claire pelted the monster with round after round.

Its yell was now peppered with the deafening roar of the minigun as it revved up and kept going. Leon watched in cruel fascination – despite his business, it wasn’t everyday he got to see a minigun in action. And he was  _ not _ counting when one was used against him. He didn’t need any more memories of Colorado, thank you very much.

Suddenly, it dropped down to all fours and tensed. Leon could see what it was going to do and he tapped Claire on the shoulder to warn her. He doubted he’d be heard over the roar of the minigun anyway.

She realised what was up and took her finger off the trigger and the both of them ran to the head of the train just as Birkin launched himself off of the train car, claws slamming down onto where they just stood a moment ago.

Leon raised the Sentinel again, fully loaded with 4 more clips as reserve, and fired right into the clump of eyes in its gloopy chest. Every shot connected and eye after eye popped. Claire stood beside him and fired another acid round into the behemoth, hoping her stunning technique from the lab would work again.

It did not. All their efforts just made the monster angrier and it roared out again. If Leon’s eardrums hadn’t been tested over and over again throughout the years, he’d have felt fucking terrified. It got down on all fours and tensed again. It reminded him of fucking Simmons. He pulled Claire’s arm as he backed away, getting out, “He’s charging! Move!”

She followed and not a moment too soon. Thankfully, when it charged it couldn’t change direction too well. Birkin’s head slammed into the metal wall behind them, emitting a huge thud. Claire’s voice shook when she spoke up, “Damn. Guess we gotta watch out for that.”

He smiled at her. He was, for lack of a better term, in his element now. He’d get them through this, but he knew Claire could handle it. “I’ll warn you earlier next time.”

Claire brought up her Spark Shot and said, “Much obliged.” This time, Birkin stayed prone and Leon took the chance, bringing the MQ11 for controlled bursts, popping as many eyes as he could. While he preferred using heavier artillery, the SMG would be able to pop more eyes faster. Time  _ was  _ of the essence, after all.

The woman’s voice could still be faintly heard over the blaring alarms, “6 minutes until detonation.” Fuck. They had to end this now and quickly, before the whole place blew, with them still inside.

The monster slashed with his claws, copying his move from earlier. This time, however, he was much slower, giving them the advantage. They backed up all the way to the other end of the car and Leon muttered, “All right, let’s get this over with.”

Claire saved the minigun for when she’d have a clear shot to all the eyes. Something told Leon that if they couldn’t pop all the eyes, they’d be here forever. Or, more likely that they’d explode. Neither option would be good.

In the meantime, they baited out the eyes. While the acid never stunned the monstrosity, they always got a resounding roar, which in virus-speak, could only mean it was hurting. The eyes had been absorbed back into the goop, so they had to deal enough damage to get them back out again. This was the time for some heavier artillery.

2 more shots with his Magnum incited a charge from the beast again. He and Claire used their earlier strategy again, ducking around the train so that the monster couldn’t hit them. God, he didn’t even want to imagine what would happen if those claws scraped him.

One more acid round and it stopped in its tracks, a whine let out of the opening with its weird-ass teeth. The eyes appeared once again and Leon was struck with an idea.

He asked Claire, “Can I get the Spark Shot?”

She handed it over without question and must’ve realised his plan immediately. She readied the minigun on her thigh again. Just as Leon kept the G in place with the needle spark, she let loose with her minigun, methodically popping as many eyes as she could in the spray of bullets. If they weren’t about to die, he would’ve been horrified at her approach.

They managed only one needle spark before the monster broke free from the stunning electricity. It passed over them, in a manner that reminded him of what it had done back in the lab whenever it went to tear off the walls to hurl at them. At least it was still the same man underneath the pink gelatin. But what was its goal?

It hooked a claw onto the wall and used its strength to hurl its other hand onto it. It kept going like that and oh  _ shit _ , it was climbing. He pulled out his Sentinel as soon as he realised – he doubted it could even take any damage with its back to them like that – but by then, it was out of damage. He cursed softly.

The female voice came back to remind them they had “5 minutes until detonation.” He cursed out loud this time.

Meanwhile the G kept going. Claire looked at him incredulously, the minigun in her hand still smoking. It climbed all the way to the roof – wait, was the roof  _ following them _ ? – and then looked down on the both of them and the train.

Leon only realised what was about to happen once it started. The monster let go of the wall and made a collision course for the train car, slamming into it. It reminded him of what had happened back at the start of this. It had just repeated itself. The  _ nerve _ on Birkin…

Claire knew it as well, serving up a host of minigun bullets to its giant gob. Leon unhooked one of the many grenades on his belt and pulled the pin, hurling it directly at the pincer-shaped teeth.  _ Hook, line and sinker _ , he thought, as the grenade dropped right into the thing’s mouth. The explosion sounded off only a moment later. The monster yelled out in pain again.

It jumped back down to face them but both he and Claire knew it was coming and he rolled out of the way in time. He looked up to make sure she was safe before dealing one more shot with the Magnum and running to the back of the train.

Claire was on the opposite end of the monster but she too followed his lead, pelting it with one acid round before running to her end of the train car. They met each other halfway through.

She had just reloaded her grenade launcher and she was looking up at him worried. “I’m running out of acid rounds. I have 2 left.”

The G was still on the opposite side of them but wouldn’t be for long. Already he was roaring out, searching for them. He cricked his neck and pulled up the Spark Shot. “We’ll make them count.”

Suddenly, they heard the wrench of metal, the only thing that warned them of the G’s plan. It had crawled up onto the train and was jumping off already. Claire had heard the roar and already started moving, good on her.

He quickly rolled so he wouldn’t get flattened by the monster and came up with the Spark Shot. Thankfully, its eyes hadn’t gone back in yet. He pulled up a charge and shocked it. He backed away slowly so he could put some distance between them. Claire didn’t have time to bring out the minigun. All the G got was a face-full of acid. Thankfully, he was far enough away so it wouldn’t splash on him.

He went back in with another Spark and Claire finally had the minigun back out in time now. He smirked to see that the eyes she’d destroyed before the climb were still that - destroyed. Claire continued where she’d left off, only interrupted by the lady once again, with “4 minutes until detonation.”

Almost as if Birkin could tell the place was coming down, he roared out, and wrenched out the needle in him. Like he had to kill them before the timer ran out. Damn, Birkin. Leon couldn’t help but applaud his determination.

It sunk to the ground and emitted a sound that sounded too much like a pant. Yes, it was getting tired! They could finish this!

He spoke too soon. It howled out, and with the last reserves of its strength, it gathered itself for one last charge. Claire was thankfully right next to the back of the train car and she quickly ducked around before the behemoth crashed.

Leon wasn’t as lucky. Birkin caught him square in the chest and he was flung backwards, banging his head on the metal wall behind them.

Thankfully, Birkin hadn’t followed up. That would’ve pulverized him. He held off, with a weird yip of happiness. If Leon’s head wasn’t swimming, he would’ve followed up with a quip about Birkin being a dog.

Fucking hell, his body felt like lead. Definitely a concussion, as far as he could tell. Now was  _ not _ the best time to get one, with Birkin raging right over him. Why did he feel like this had happened before?

Right before he could grab the Sentinel laying beside him or the G could finish him off – he still wasn’t sure what would have happened first – he heard Claire yell out, “Over here, bitch!”

It was followed up by the rev of the minigun engine and soon, bullets flew. Leon couldn’t see her from his vantage point, but she must have run around the train, behind Birkin. What a fucking trooper.

He slowly dusted himself off as best he could with the ringing in his ears as Birkin was now focused on Claire completely. He yelled out one final time, squirming and jittering. He watched as it slowly burst into pieces, the upper half of him melting into goo and seeping down. What was left was the empty mouth with its arms and legs splayed out prone.

Not the worst monster death he’d seen, but still. Pretty high up there.

“3 minutes until detonation.” And not a moment too soon. He sighed with relief.

Claire ran up to him and worriedly said, “Are – are you okay? You were flung pretty far back.”

He chuckled wryly. “That’s not the hardest I’ve been thrown, y’know? And…don’t worry, I’m doing fine.” He wasn’t lying. He could already feel the drowsiness in his system being washed away and he was back in high alert. At least something good came out of the Plaga still in his system.

She pursed her lips together but Leon could see the relief in her eyes. He looked around and realised their lowering platform had slowed down. He could see the remaining train cars docked up and ready, behind them on the tracks.

He carefully put a hand on Claire’s shoulder and when she didn’t shrug it off, he said, “Come on, let’s get on the train. We’re almost out of here.”

She nodded and together, the two of them clambered up. Something still nagged at Leon. “Oh yeah, Claire? Before I forget to mention -”

But before he could get the fateful words out of his mouth, he heard a soft voice yell out, “Claire! Mr. Agent!”

Sherry ran up to Claire and smothered her in a hug. Claire breathed out, “It’s okay, We’re here.” It sounded shaky, almost as if she couldn’t believe it herself. He had trouble believing it every single day.

She disentangled herself from Sherry and looked at him quizzically. “What was it you wanted to say?”

He couldn’t help himself. “Yeah, you were right. I’m from the future.”

When Claire didn’t respond, he waved a hand in front of her face obnoxiously. “You with me?”

All that followed was a hushed, “I fucking knew it.”

Leon just smiled and walked up to the front of the train, “Let’s get this thing moving.”

He heard the clank of the train cars connecting themselves to the back of the main engine car and then looked out into the darkness. He placed a hand on the lever they’d need to press before Claire interrupted him. “Wait, what about Leon?”

He shrugged callously. He knew how  _ Leon _ would end up on the train. “Don’t worry about it. He’ll figure it out.” And he pushed the lever up. He’d somewhat flown a commercial airline before; he could handle a train.

The train started slowly, but soon they were chugging down the tracks, out of the self-destructing lab.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and dont worry at all about the last two chapters being late. i wrote them when i started this, so just an edit and i can get them out, within a week. remember when i posted twice a week? yeah, me neither.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guys guys im back <3 sorry for the delay,, uh,, i had exams? but they're done for now so i'm just going to put this out here. and for your patience i'll be posting the final chapter/epilogue at the same time too ye boi !!!

Claire stood at the front of the train and looked out into the darkness. They had hopefully finally killed Birkin and were now finally going to get out of this damn city.

She looked back down to Sherry and the agent, who were sitting at the small train seats. He had a hand on her hair and he was actually genuinely smiling. She couldn’t see Sherry’s expression but she knew the girl would be smiling too. She raised her eyebrows at them. Something had changed between them. They already had this weird bond going on but now they were definitely closer. If she didn’t know the two and had just seen them in public somewhere, she would have assumed they were a family.

Saps.

She got closer and stood next to them. She looked at Sherry and asked her, “What’s the first thing you wanna do when we get out of here?”

Sherry looked away from the agent and stared at her for a second before dropping her voice and gaze. “I want…I want to see where you live.”

_ Aww _ . This child was so precious and Claire had only known her for a day, but if anything happened to her, she would kill everyone and then herself. Well, anything  _ else _ .

She chuckled and said, “Good. Because I…need to take a shower.”

She pulled up Sherry as she giggled and said, “Yeah.”

Claire questioned, “Really? That bad?” and made a display of sniffing her armpits. Then she said, “Oh, ok. Yep, I see it now.”

The agent had let out his legs to rest on the whole seat – which really did remind her of a cat – and laughed at her. He really was softening and she could definitely see him emoting and reacting more to everything ever since they got Sherry out of that whole mess. It was really kind of sweet but it still made her wonder what kind of relationship he had with her. Especially now that he had actually said that he was from the future, which she had totally called.

She mocked anger and asked him, “What are you going to do, future-man? Or are you going to keep it a secret just like everything else?”

He swatted at her non-maliciously and said, “I…am going to go home with Chris and sleep for a week. Did you know I actually went through this already in the last week? My shoulders really do need time to heal, you know.”

But Claire didn’t care about that part. Well, she did but she didn’t focus on it for long. “You’re going home with Chris?”

She didn’t mean it maliciously; she had known Chris didn’t really care about genders and she fully supported him in whoever he wanted to date. But, the blush on the agent’s face and the disgruntled mutter of “Shut up Redfield,” would not cease to make her day.

Suddenly, the doors of the carriage opened and a haze of a blue uniform and blond hair enveloped her vision. She exclaimed, “Leon!”

She didn’t see the other head swing up in confusion at the same time.

***

Leon was having a thoroughly shitty day.

First, the whole thing about his first day as a police officer being ruined by  _ zombies _ , of all things! And everything else, like the Tyrant, and Ada…

Don’t get him wrong, he had known something was up with Ada’s story. There were gaps, here and there. The FBI only sending one agent? How she prioritised Annette over the hordes of zombies in their wake?

But her being a mercenary? He didn’t expect that. So,  _ so, _ out of his league. He’d signed up to be an officer, to help others. Not to kill zombies and be betrayed by a mercenary, a probably dead mercenary.

Even though he knew what she was capable of, he somehow knew she wouldn’t shoot him and he was  _ right _ . But she had fallen into the depths of the NEST and he would never see her again. And he had to face that. But not right now.

Still, who else could have thrown him the rocket launcher?

He got up off his ass and got into the train. He hoped Claire was there. It would make it so much better if she had also gotten out safe and sound. He didn’t think he would be able to leave alone if he had gotten her killed too. All his fault, all over again.

The door opened automatically and he saw Claire with a small kid and another guy who…looked familiar even though he was pretty sure he had never met him. Claire called out, “Leon!”

He responded, “Claire! Told you we’d get out of there.” As he said it, he saw the small child look at him and back at the older man in some kind of wonder. The man smirked and winked at her before staring at the wall again.

Claire said with a huge grin, “You did.”

He decided to ask about the elephant in the room. “Who is this?”

Claire brought the girl in front of her and said, “This? This is Sherry.”

He then looked at the man and asked again, feeling so very out of the loop. “Who’s that?”

She looked between them and said, “Hell if I know. At this point, I don’t think he even has a name.”

The man looked up in frustration. “I do. You just don’t get to hear it.”

Claire continued as if she hadn’t heard him. “I just call him Mr. Agent. It still gets on his nerves.” And the small wince the man made confirmed that. Leon focused on another thing though.  _ Agent _ ? What the fuck? Was this man using Claire like Ada used him?

And it must’ve been present in his eyes or some shit as the man raised his hands to potentially calm him down. “Relax. I’m nothing like Ada.”

Claire looked up in confusion and asked, “Who’s Ada?” That assured him that she had not in fact messed with Claire as well. How did this guy know her?

The man shrugged and responded, “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

Claire looked ready to punch something. If this had been something she had to deal with the whole time, he completely understood.

Suddenly, the whole train rocked and everyone looked around in confusion. Only the agent stood up and gestured for Claire’s – wait, that was a  _ minigun _ , how the  _ fuck _ had she gotten a  _ minigun _ ? She asked him what was going on and he responded with one word: “Birkin.”

The girl – Sherry – flinched and Leon didn’t even want to know how Claire had gotten involved with the Birkin family. Hell, his shoulder still ached from Annette’s 9mm. She wordlessly handed over the minigun and the agent assured them, “I’ll go take a look and try to kill him. You guys stay here.”

And with that, the man was gone into the next train carriage.

***

Leon was fucking tired of William Birkin. He had forgotten how much of a goddamn shitlord he was. How many times had he appeared to fuck shit up? This was his fifth time, not counting how many times his younger self had to deal with it. He was going to fucking tear him apart so he couldn’t put another hand on Sherry.

He was happy that Claire had actually somewhat listened to him and conserved the ammo on the minigun, only using it when Birkin’s huge eye collection was exposed to use it. It still had at least half of its bullets left and that was good enough.

He set it down on an empty seat next to him. He knew how huge this final form of Birkin could get and he wasn’t going to use it now.

Suddenly, the whole back of the train compartment exploded in a flurry of metal and tentacles and Birkin showed his gross face. He started spreading his weird body over as much of the train car as he could –  _ did this count as manspreading _ ? Leon’s mind supplied unhelpfully – and his tentacles reached over everything. Leon let loose with the Desert Eagle in a steady burst, coaxing it to open its mouth to show off its eye. He yelled out, “You got a problem with death, dicknips?”

The door opened behind him and he could have cursed as he reloaded the gun. He spared a turn around to see Claire and himself both behind him, half-hidden behind the doors. Claire mustered out, “What the fuck kind of insult is ‘dicknips’?”

Both of them looked incredibly freaked out of their minds, which made sense since this was their first ‘final form’. No matter how many years Leon would fight these monstrosities, their final forms would always mess him up. The other Leon piped up and Leon could see him gathering his courage, “Normally I’m all for cheesy lines but, yeah, what the heck, man?”

He gruffly yelled, “Shut up, the both of you. Get back!”

However, Claire shook her head resolutely. “You’re  _ not _ counting me out just yet.”

He – the past him anyway – had already brought up his Lightning Hawk and started shooting. None of his weapons would be much use against this thing and he didn’t seem to have the anti-tank missile launcher on his person. Must’ve dropped it when getting on the train. Figures. The guy still had noodle arms. Claire shot an acid round right into its big maw.

Leon started shooting until his clip was empty again. He reloaded and kept going again. Along the way, he…the other him had run out of ammo and had retreated back to the furthest room for Sherry. He and Claire were forced to retreat back into the other train car because of Birkin’s ever-expanding form. The tentacles were continuous and wrapped around more and more of the train, wrenching it apart in his inch for the girl behind them, the three adults the only form of defence for her..

He had grabbed the minigun on their way out and he finally started using it, softly whispering, “It’s my turn, bitch.”

He let loose with the minigun, searing against his thigh. It was almost therapeutic in a way, 7.62mm NATO rounds ripping through Dor. Birkin and forcing his huge eye out into the open. Claire got the memo pretty quick and used her final acid round on the eye before taking out her SLS60 again. She was prepared to stand right by him for their final stand and he was thankful for it.

Leon kept going with the minigun until Birkin pulled out his final hat trick and wrenched off the top of the whole train carriage. He and Claire had been backed up completely that the automatic doors opened again and he could see Sherry inside with him – oh god, this was fucking weird.

The whole train rocked and everyone was thrown from their feet, with only Sherry and him staying semi-upright. The younger man came to a realisation and yelled out, “We gotta lose that car!”

He started working on the binding rail while Claire got to her feet and jumped over, clearing the gap and staying on her feet. Leon, meanwhile, stayed down. He was just so fucking  _ tired _ . He just really wanted to go home and rest after Arias – was that too much to ask? He picked up one of the shards of metal strewn around and picked it up.

He remembered this through his other self’s eyes and he readied the final blow in his arms and stuck the pipe straight in Birkin’s big, fat eye. He whispered, too low for any of the others to hear him, “Hands off my daughter, you fucker!” and kept shoving the pipe as far in as it would go. He cruelly listened as Birkin squirmed before wrenching it back out.

Orange pus almost rained out of the eye and it quivered in every direction. Leon quickly latched onto Claire’s hand and pulled himself back into the safer train car just as his younger self broke the connector and sent Birkin reeling backwards as his carriage lost speed.

The three adults in the car stared in cold fascination, him having the good sense to shield Sherry’s eyes, as Birkin’s car slowed down and exploded in a fiery explosion while the creature made whimpers as it disappeared from view, finally dead.


	14. Epilogue

Leon was so fucking confused and he just…wanted a nap.

After all the shit that the day had brought, he was prepared to just sleep forever. But however much he wanted to, he just couldn’t. His body was shot so full of adrenaline from the Tyrant fight and Birkin’s final form and Ada…

It was finally catching up to him how many times he could’ve died tonight and his brain was just _not_ cooperating with him. He finally gave up and went to sit with Claire. Sherry was sitting with the agent, both of them content to just sit with each other in silence.

He didn’t know how Claire had met either of them and yes, he had questions. Claire was thankfully more than willing to answer. “Sherry…she’s actually Annette and William’s daughter.”

That wasn’t what Leon had assumed but oh god, it made way too much sense. He had gotten involved with them through Umbrella itself but there literally wasn’t any reason for Claire to be there other than something like that. And it was exactly something that was fucked up enough to come from an incident like this.

“That…makes too much sense. But how did you meet her? And _him_?”

Claire smiled fondly and gestured with her hands. “Woah, woah, slow down cowboy. How about I tell you my story and then you tell me yours?”

Leon nodded. “I’d like that.”

~

Claire started first and – damn, if Leon thought his adventure was weird, it was nothing compared to hers. She told him how she’d met the agent in the police station and he’d helped her get out of there and then how they’d found Sherry under the police station. She talked about the Chief (who sounded like an asshole and he suddenly hated that he’d tried to defend the man) and Sherry getting kidnapped and stuck in the same garbage room that – that Ada had gotten stuck in.

He reacted appropriately at all the right places and gasped when she told him that Birkin had infected Sherry with the G-virus. They both marvelled over the fact that they had both fought him at relatively the same places. She talked about their trek through the lab and how she’d got the antiviral agent. They cured Sherry and fought Birkin again before they got on the train and got here.

None of that had the same effect on him as the fact that the agent was apparently from the _future_. What the hell? His eyes widened at Claire’s statement and he exclaimed, “Are…are you serious?”

He looked back at the agent. Sherry had fallen asleep on him and he was stroking her hair in a familial manner while smiling. His other hand was up to his ear, and he was talking too low for anyone else to hear him. It might’ve been a radio system small enough to fit in his ear.

Claire just shrugged in response. “I don’t really know. But…I think I believe him.” She looked back at him and asked, “Now, what about your story?”

He rubbed the back of his neck and started it. He felt semi-conscious of it because Claire had been through so much, without any kind of training. She didn’t judge though, and she just listened. She put her arm on his shoulder comfortingly when he told her about Ada and pulled him into a hug despite the fact that they were both sweaty and grimy from this nightmare, carefully avoiding the minefield that was the wound on his shoulder. How it hadn’t been torn apart after the Tyrant, Leon wouldn’t know.

“Not to interrupt this bonding moment or anything, but Chris wants to talk with you,” a deep, gruff voice interrupted them.

Claire patted him on the back before disentangling and taking something from the agent’s hand. She put it in her ear and Leon tuned out as he didn’t want to seem insensitive. He looked around and saw that Sherry had been properly laid down on the bench with a small blanket behind her head as a pillow while the agent had found a different seat. He probably didn’t want to disturb her.

Leon saw this as a chance to get some more answers.

He approached the agent who was lounging and staring into the ceiling. He cleared his throat and the man dropped his gaze to look at him head on. He suddenly realised just how much the man’s haircut looked like his and he was filled with a sense of déjà vu. He had raised his eyebrows and was looking expectantly at him.

He asked the first question that was on his mind. “Are you really from the future?”

The man chuckled and raised his legs off the seat to sit down properly and patted on the seat next to him. Leon realised he had been standing awkwardly in front of him and gratefully took the seat.

The man side-eyed him and said, “Yeah. The only question is: do you believe me?”

He shrugged and said, “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

The agent nodded.“That’s an appropriate answer for what you’ve been through. You’re going to have to figure it out though. Any other questions?”

He steeled up his courage and asked the one question he’d been dreading. “What about…Ada? How do you know her?”

The man looked off into nowhere and flatly said, “Ada, huh? She’s like a part of me I can’t get let go off. Let’s leave it at that.”

Leon’s mind raced. “But if you’re from the future…and you know her, then maybe –”

He was cut off before he could finish his thought. “I can’t tell you that. You’re going to have to find out yourself.”

The agent rubbed his hands together and Leon asked his final question. “Fine. Who’s Claire talking to?”

The man looked surprised, almost as if he hadn’t expected that particular question but he just shook his head and chuckled once more. “That’s Chris. Claire’s brother.”

Leon creased his eyebrows. “Isn’t Chris missing? And in Europe? How is Claire talking to him?”

“That’s not ‘present’ Chris. I was on a mission with him when this weird time travel bullshit happened. Somehow, I can still talk to him, despite being 20 years apart.”

Leon was…not expecting that. His face must’ve shown it, since the man put a hand on his shoulder and said, “You get used to it.”

He retracted his hand and turned to look Leon in the eyes as he said, “I’m assuming you don’t have any more questions. Could you move? I really need to rest after today.”

He nodded unconsciously and got up. The agent nodded in thanks and put his legs back onto the seat. He went to sit next to Claire, who was talking with _Chris_ , and tuned out as he thought about everything and nothing at once.

***

The train had finally let them out somewhere outside city limits. Leon was glad to finally be out of Raccoon City, for the second time. The three in front of him had no idea the city was going to be nuked tomorrow, huh?

Sherry held onto Claire and _his_ arms. But also, not his arms. It was his past self’s arms? Shit, he was getting way too old for this.

Sherry looked up at Claire and…him and asked, way too innocently, “So, are you two boyfriend and girlfriend?”

The question came so far from left field that their whole procession stopped and stared for a second. He…his past self, looked down at Sherry and gestured between him and Claire and stammered on the words. “We, uh, we actually just met?”

Claire looked at the both of them and nodded in assent. “Yeah.” Then she looked straight up at _him_ (holy hell how was he supposed to do this?) and went, “Would’ve been one hell of a first date, though.”

His younger self stared dumbfounded into nothing and this situation was one of the freakiest Leon had ever been in. He couldn’t help but to snort. It surprised even him, considering that he probably hadn’t laughed this whole damn time.

Claire looked back at him in such astonishment that he had interrupted their flirting (oh god, what the fuck was his life) and whisper-shouted, “You got a problem with that, asshole?”

That cracked him up way more than he would ever admit and he had to smack on his thighs to calm himself down. His throat made a noise that sounded way too much like a keyboard smash for his liking and he almost forcibly stopped the laughter.

Before anyone could comment on what had just occurred, Sherry – his one saving grace as usual – pointed at an incoming truck. He didn’t pay attention as he really did have to go back to his time period before his unfiltered mouth absolutely wrecked the timeline. Chris had already called in on the train to tell him that they could get him out already but Leon was adamant to wait for them to get out of city limits first. He didn’t think anything _else_ ambushed them, but he would prefer to let them out before he disappeared and probably messed up their minds.

He reached up to turn on his comm again and told Chris, “Okay, we’re out of the city. You can get me out of here now.”

Chris’ voice came through. “Alright. Give us a few minutes and we can hopefully get you out of there. See you soon.”

Leon’s voice grew fonder as he replied back with a “See you soon” of his own and he turned to look back at the ragtag group of survivors ahead of him. This only made him remember just how much he missed Claire and Sherry back in his time and he made a mental reminder to arrange a movie night for the three of them, just for nostalgia.

They looked ready to head off to wherever they could end up to rid themselves of this nightmare and Leon knew all the shit that awaited them. It would be so simple to just stop it, to send them away somewhere else and try to protect them as long as he could. But he knew how futile it was.

Sherry turned around to him and he could see her waiting. He spoke up for the first time since they had got out of the city (if you didn’t count the full-body laugh, which he didn’t), “Guess it’s time for me to go. I’ve got a different ride out of here.”

His younger self attempted a half-hearted goodbye and didn’t say anything else. He got it. The guy didn’t know him (and if that wasn’t ironic, nothing was), and it would be weird of him to say anything else anyway.

Claire meanwhile, she had things to say. She gave him the same, weird salute she had been giving him this whole damn time and said, “Goodbye to you too, you ass. Say hello to Chris from the future for me.” And _no_ , he definitely didn’t blush at her other statement.

Sherry had run over to him almost immediately and wrapped her arms around his legs. He ruffled his hands through her hair like second nature and removed her hands long enough for him to kneel down and wrap his arms around her as well. He loved Sherry just as if she were his daughter and he softly whispered, “I have to go, Sherry. It’s okay.”

Sherry whispered back to him, her voice trembling. “But Agent Leon, don’t go! I…I just lost my mom. I can’t lose you too.”

And okay his heart almost broke at such a sentence and he hugged her fiercely. Even just hearing his name being actually spoken, it sent volumes through him. “I won’t be gone for long, okay? I’ll see you again.”

She disentangled herself just enough to look into his eyes and she said, “Really? You’ll come back?”

Leon chuckled softly and said, “I’ll always come back for you, Sherry. See you soon.”

She hugged him again before letting go and running back to the other two. As soon as she was there though, she said way too loud for his liking, “Thank you, Agent Leon!”

And Leon could spend days staring at Claire and _his_ expressions. It was the fucking funniest thing he had seen all day. And before he could stop himself, he opened his big, dumb mouth. “I told you, you can just call me Leon.”

And he had fucking done it. He had done the one damn thing he told himself he wasn’t going to do. He had absolutely ruined the timeline and now Claire would have it in for him for forever. He turned and immediately started walking away.

Claire immediately followed up her gasp with, “What the _fuck_? What the fuck! What the fuck! That is something you fucking tell me, you coward!”

Leon started walking faster away from them and almost yelled to Chris as he activated his comm, “Chris? Chris! Get me out of here! I pissed off Claire, I need to _go_!”

He heard a sympathetic sound on the other end and Chris replied, “Oh shit. Ok, wait we’re this close, give us a sec.”

The comm cut out and Leon turned back towards them. Sherry looked apologetic – keyword: “looked”, oh she’d masterminded this, Sherry why? – and Claire was unholstering the Spark Shot. His eyes went wide; she wasn’t seriously gonna shoot him, right? _Right_? Did she even still have ammo left?

He tried to protest but Claire cut him off, “Oh no no. You do not withhold that information from me and expect to live, buster. Come back here.”

His eyes landed on _his own_ , which was just such a weird thing to say, and he knew that _he_ wouldn’t be of any help. Hell, this incident would probably scar his self for years to come. “Claire – Claire, don’t you fucking dare-”

“Shut the fuck up.”

And he almost fucking wept when he saw his skin starting to blur. He kind of remembered this from his first jump and he knew that Chris had come through. He whispered, “Thank fuck,” out loud.

Before darkness overcame his vision, he could see Claire reaching out to grab him and his own self looking traumatised. Well, shit.

~

_“Y’ello? Claire Redfield speaking?”_

_“Oh my GOD, Claire you won’t believe what’s happened.”_

_“Uh, New York went up in smoke?”_

_“Okay, yes that, but also, I went back to Raccoon.”_

_“Huh?”_

_“Come on, Claire, you gotta remember? You tried to shoot me.”_

_“Oh, that! I see now.”_

_“Wait, you tried TWICE! Claire!”_

_“Well, if you hadn’t snuck around the whole time and forced me to call you Mr. Agent-”_

_“I didn’t force you into anything!”_

_“Be glad I didn’t call you Agent Asshole.”_

_“Fine,_ thank you _?”_

_“See that wasn’t so hard.”_

_“What am I thanking you for?”_

_“Shut up, Kennedy. I’ll be on the next flight over. Just finished with my paperwork. Take care of Chris for me until I’m there.”_

_“Aren’t I already doing that?”_

_“What I mean is, don’t transport yourself to the past again. Nothing will ever be more scarring than you saying “Call me Leon,” while you were standing right next to me. Oh god, it’s giving me a migraine just thinking about it.”_

_“Well, think about me, having to refer to myself in the third person.”_

_“Whatever, asshat. I’m glad you’re alright. Hang tight, I’ll be there soon.”_

_“Can’t wait.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> end of an ERA amirite?? this was the first fic i ever wrote and im so glad with how it turned out. this got me some very cute mutuals on tumblr (hi alex ❤), gave me confidence to actually write! in my free time! all the drabbles i've written, the other stories i wrote, all came right from this and the confidence y'all gave me to start writing. thank you for all the kudos and the comments it's helped me so much. 
> 
> the whole reason for this fic was because i really wanted to explore claire and leon's dynamic, especially present-day leon because they haven't interacted on-screen since what, degen? yeah, i can't deal with botox face leon sorry. and i wholeheartedly enjoyed writing this so much. ahhhhh
> 
> please come talk to me on tumblr at @bi-sukis. i'm pretty much an atla blog right now HAHAH but still i haven't forgotten resi, i'd love to talk to others about it! bye for now. even though i've got atla fic ideas, 90% of my wip list is still resi stuff, so there's a lot coming up hopefully, don't worry.


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